đ Weekly Journal: Meta Blends Music and Metaverse with Doja Catâs VR Experience
[6 min read] Your weekend guide to getting ahead on the digital frontier. Learn how Doja Cat is breaking new ground in the Metaverse as Meta Horizon Worldsâ first-ever music artist avatar.
Welcome to this weekâs Weekly Journal đ, your guide to the latest news & innovation in emerging technology, digital assets, and our exciting path to the Metaverse. This is week 125 of the 520 weeks of newsletters I have committed to, a decade of documenting our physical and digital lives converge. New subscribers are encouraged to check out the history & purpose of this newsletter as well as the archive.
- Ryan
đ Digital Assets Market Update
To me, the Metaverse is the convergence of physical & virtual lives. As we work, play and socialise in virtual worlds, we need virtual currencies & assets. These have now reached mainstream finance as a defined asset class:
đĽđşď¸Heat map shows the 7 day change in price (red down, green up) and block size is market cap. Huge positive week.
đ Crypto Fear and Greed Index is based on volatility, social media sentiments, surveys, market momentum, and a few other bits and pieces. Back into the Greed Zone!
đď¸ Metaverse news from this week:
Doja Cat Becomes Meta Horizonâs First Music Avatar, Blending Music and Metaverse Culture
Doja Cat has officially entered the Metaverse, becoming the first-ever music artist to be transformed into an interactive avatar within Meta Horizon Worlds. As part of Metaâs latest initiative to bring celebrity culture deeper into virtual spaces, fans can now experience Doja through an immersive VR concert, The Scarlet Tour, and even embody her avatar inside Horizonâs social environments.
The reimagined Scarlet Tour concert streams in crisp 3D 180° video inside Horizonâs Music Valley until 5 May, offering fans a front-row viewâor any angle they chooseâfrom the comfort of their VR headsets. Alongside the concert, Meta has dropped an official Doja Cat avatar and a collection of virtual merchandise, including exclusive outfits and dance emotes, allowing fans to bring her signature aesthetic into their own social VR experiences. This launch is part of a broader push by Meta to evolve Horizon Worlds into a vibrant hub for immersive entertainment, where music, celebrity, and social interaction converge. Artist avatars like Dojaâs are seen as key to making the Metaverse feel more culturally alive and personally meaningful.
In the context of the emerging Metaverse, this move highlights a growing trend: artists are no longer just performing in virtual worldsâtheyâre becoming part of them. This blurs the line between live performance, digital merchandising, and fan engagement, offering a glimpse into a future where music fandom exists simultaneously across physical and digital realms. With initiatives like this, Meta is signaling that the open Metaverse will not just be about gaming or business productivityâit will also be a place where culture, creativity, and identity thrive. đ Read the full article
Infinite Realityâs $15 Billion Metaverse Mystery Deepens as Investor Finally Revealed
Florida-based metaverse startup Infinite Reality shook the tech world earlier this year by announcing a massive $3 billion fundraising round from a sole anonymous investor, catapulting its self-declared valuation to over $15 billion. The announcement, met with widespread industry skepticism, gained even more attention after Forbes published an investigative exposĂŠ revealing lawsuits, unpaid bills, SEC scrutiny, and highly questionable financial claims behind the scenes. Facing mounting pressure, Infinite Reality revealed â just one hour after the Forbes report â that the $3 billion investment was ârepresented byâ Sterling Select, a venture development firm loosely affiliated with Sterling Equities, the family office tied to former New York Mets owners Saul Katz and Fred Wilpon. However, Sterling Equities quickly distanced itself, saying it had no involvement in the investment and clarifying that Sterling Select operates independently, albeit with some shared personnel links.
Despite this disclosure, serious questions remain. It is still unclear whether Sterling Select itself made the full $3 billion investment or is merely acting as an intermediary for unidentified backers. Furthermore, Sterling Selectâs own track record and scale â modest compared to the size of this deal â raises doubts about how it could be facilitating one of the largest tech investments of the year. Sterlingâs venture activities, according to public records, have historically involved much smaller early-stage deals. The entire episode underscores how Infinite Reality â whose core product of 3D "virtual storefronts" generated just $75 million in revenue in 2024 â has used aggressive acquisitions and flashy announcements to drive up its valuation while facing accusations of financial opacity and governance red flags. Internal sources even report cash flow issues and multiple lawsuits for unpaid obligations, despite the supposed flood of fresh capital. đ Full Forbes Investigation: "Magic Money", Follow-Up: "Questions Remain After Investor Named"
đ Read of the Week: Metaverse Industry Set to Hit US$1.1 Trillion by 2030: Are We Ready to Shift from WFH to WFM?
A major new report paints a bold future for the Metaverse, projecting explosive growth from US$146.6 billion in 2024 to US$1.1 trillion by 2030 â a CAGR of 39.3%. Titled "Metaverse - Global Strategic Business Report," it explores how virtual worlds are not just a social or gaming phenomenon but an economic megatrend reshaping how we work, shop, and connect.
Key highlights include:
Shift from WFH to WFM (Work From Metaverse): Companies are already envisioning remote work evolving into fully immersive virtual office environments.
Technologies Driving Growth: VR/AR, blockchain, AI, digital twins, and 5G will form the foundational pillars.
Biggest Opportunities: Software is projected to reach US$646.8 billion by 2030; hardware is growing even faster at 42.9% CAGR.
Regional Growth: China will lead emerging markets with 42.8% CAGR, while the U.S. remains a heavyweight at nearly US$60 billion today.
Strategic Insights: Blockchain, NFTs, and crypto will be essential to virtual commerce ecosystems; "phygital" (physical + digital) experiences will become mainstream.
The report also covers tariff impacts, sustainability concerns, cybersecurity challenges, and how major players like Accenture, Adobe, Meta, Alibaba, and Animoca Brands are positioning themselves.
đ See the full summary here
The question it leaves us with: Are businesses â and societies â truly ready for the Work From Metaverse era?
đĽ Watch of the week:
As the metaverse evolves into a truly immersive, persistent digital world, AI agents will be the invisible engines powering next-generation experiences.
This video explains â in simple, practical terms â how weâve moved from basic AI like ChatGPT, to complex AI workflows, and now to autonomous AI agents.
Understanding this shift is crucial, because in the emerging metaverse, AI agents will navigate, transact, and even build on behalf of users.
From customer service to dynamic world generation, AI agents are not just useful â they are becoming foundational. I found this video below an excellent primer.
AI Showcaseđ¨đ¤đľâđź:
In the Metaverse, AI will be critical for creating intelligent virtual environments and avatars that can understand and respond to users with human-like cognition and natural interactions.
This weekâs AI showcase highlights Microsoftâs bold vision of the future workforce, where every human becomes a "boss" of AI agents. In its latest Work Trend Index report, Microsoft predicts the rise of âfrontier firmsâ â organisations built around on-demand intelligence, with autonomous AI agents carrying out much of the operational work. According to Microsoft, we are moving through three phases: first, every employee gains an AI assistant; second, AI agents work alongside humans as digital colleagues; and third, humans delegate full workflows to AI agents, checking in only as needed. This shift, Microsoft argues, will transform every worker into a "CEO of their own agent-powered startup", driving massive gains in speed, agility, and value creation. However, while the vision promises to eliminate drudgery and amplify productivity, experts warn of major risks: mass job displacement, loss of human knowledge within organisations, and wider socio-economic consequences. As companies embrace autonomous AI to reduce costs and scale faster, balancing innovation with human-centred values will become one of the defining challenges of the next decade.
Thatâs all for this week! If you have any organisations in mind that could benefit from keynotes about emerging technology, be sure to reach out. Public speaking is one of many services I offer.