Hollywood-based virtual reality gaming studio ForeVR Games Inc. raised $7 million in additional seed financing to grow its studio and slate of offerings.

The round was led by Redwood City-based venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from investors including New York-based Galaxy Interactive, Zynga Inc. founder Mark Pincus and Twitch Interactive Inc. founder Emmett Shear, the company announced Aug. 17. The investment brings ForeVR’s total funding to $8.5 million.
 
The company plans to use the funding to build out its team, develop new games, expand its products to additional platforms and continue to upgrade its recently released VR bowling game, ForeVR Bowl.  

“ForeVR Bowl and the rest of the ForeVR lineup represent the best of what’s possible with VR games and, I believe, will be as important to this medium as Zynga was to mobile,” Sam Englebardt, general partner at Galaxy Interactive, said in a statement.
 
Founded in 2020, ForeVR aims to translate popular and classic in-person games into VR formats.
 
The company is led by Marcus Segal, former senior vice president of operations at Zynga, and Mike Pagano Doom, former chief executive of Built Games. Segal serves as the chief executive of ForeVR, and Doom serves as the chief creative officer. The company employs 25 people.
 
ForeVR released its first game, ForeVR Bowl, in May on Irvine-based VR platform Oculus and plans to release the game soon on video game digital distribution service Steam.
 
“with this raise we will be able to expand and release more games to meet the increasing demand for VR,” Segal said in a statement.