Infinite Reality — a fast-moving company focused on AI, immersive technology and digital media — has agreed to acquire agentic AI firm Touchcast for $500 million in cash and stock.
Infinite Reality has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Touchcast in a deal that comes just a few weeks after Infinite Reality acquired Napster for $207 million. And Infinite Reality said the transaction agreement values the company at $15.5 billion.
Boca Raton, Florida-based Infinite Reality has been on an acquisition binge to assemble what used to be popularly known as the metaverse, a term coined by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson decades ago in his novel Snow Crash. But after Meta entered this market, a lot of people became skeptical and metaverse is kind of a dirty word. Using the phrase immersive technology instead, Infinite Reality has been acquiring companies to build the metaverse.
Amish Shah, Infinite Reality’s chief business officer, acknowledged in an interview with GamesBeat that the company no longer refers to itself as a metaverse company. There was too much hype associated with the word, which was coined by Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash, a 1992 sci-fi novel.
“The difference here is we’ve been around with seasoned entrepreneurs building towards what’s happening today,” said Shah. “A lot of others are just coming out of blue, raising valuations where you don’t know what their vision is, what their product is, what their team is. I think the difference here is there is a story behind us. Our CEO Jon (Acunto) is a five-time entrepreneur. I’ve had exits. And Edo (Segal) is a five-time exit entrepreneur. It’s a great question and we get it all the time.”
“All three of us, unfortunately, are in our 50s. We’re not in our 20s. We’ve made a lot of mistakes, we’ve learned a lot,” Shah said. “We’ve become aligned, and this is why I think the story is so compelling, and the AI market is just insane right now. There’s no right answer, but we didn’t go down a traditional path. Valuations are what investors believe. We have done due diligence. For eight months, we looked at the marketplace.”
He said the teams met at the Web Summit last year and then started talking. And They figured out the deal in the subsequent months.
Edo Segal, Touchcast founder and CEO, said in an interview that this is the fifth company he has sold in the AI space, and he said Touchcast’s powerful agentic AI platform, known as Mentorverse, generates an infinite universe of specialized AI mentors who engage in natural and face-to-face video conversations.
He showed me a demo of the tech, which has some time delays but enables pretty good human avatars who can hold conversations with players or users, depending on the app that they are offering help for.
And, unlike traditional chatbots or static web experiences, Touchcast can consistent personalities with deep domain expertise to deliver genuinely helpful guidance through natural, multimodal interactions. The integration of Touchcast’s technology across Infinite Reality’s portfolio of products and services will enable iR customers to tap AI agents for a number of tasks that drive user engagement, customer support, and sales.
For example, within Napster (recently acquired by iR), Touchcast tech will enable subscribers to easily generate immersive social listening spaces and leverage knowledgeable AI agents for music playlisting, community management, and music trivia, among other engaging features. For iR Enterprise and iR Studio customers, the Touchcast toolkit empowers Fortune 500 brands, small and medium-size companies, and creators with knowledgeable, trained, and on-brand AI agents designed to power global and scalable sales and customer service functions.
A number of people might blink their eyes or shake their heads when they learn that Infinite Reality, a company with 300 or so employees, is worth $15.5 billion. I asked Shah how the company can convince people that its efforts are real. When the company raised $3 billion at a valuation of $12.5 billion in January, some tech experts were skeptical as Infinite Reality did not reveal the investor that made it possible. Shah noted that the investor was not seeking fame, but he said it would likely become evident as more announcements happen.
Infinite Reality has, however, revealed its roster of other investors and shareholders including RSE Ventures, Liberty Media, Lux Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Ruttenberg Gordon Investments, Gross Labs Investments, Sterling Select (Sterling Equities), MGM, T-Mobile Ventures, Courtside VC, Exor, Terracap, Live Nation, Harvard Investment Group, as well as notable individuals such as Producer/DJ Steve Aoki, Grammy Award-winning band Imagine Dragons, and NBA All Star Rudy Gobert.
The deals included acquisitions of Obsess, Stakes, Drone Racing, Ethereal and Action Face. It also bought a majority stake in Super League Gaming. Back in January, Infinite Reality said it raised $3 billion at a valuation of $12.25 billion. And in 2024, the company raised $350 million and bought Landvault.
Touchcast, built on OpenAI and delivered on Microsoft Azure via a $50 million strategic partnership, provides a suite of groundbreaking AI delivery systems that dramatically improve response times for AI interaction.
For businesses, this means the ability to deliver seamless, human-like experiences while boosting efficiency and reducing costs—a vital edge in today’s competitive digital landscape. Touchcast’s platform is turning what once required entire teams and years of work into one-click solutions with multiple products ranging from AI mentors to transforming websites into interactive AI experiences, and more.
Touchcast’s enterprise-grade technology is SOC2 compliant with global scalability. The company holds 27 patents related to AI and interactive video technology, including systems for coordinated presentations, video conferencing enhancements, and intelligent virtual assistant systems.
Touchcast’s AI mentors interact like humans, not chatbots, work together as a team of specialized agents to build on each other’s expertise and solve complex challenges, and deliver immediate ROI by elevating the online experience. Led by seasoned entrepreneurs and trusted by top global enterprises across automotive, home improvement, management consulting, and education categories, Touchcast is transforming how businesses adopt AI by making these advanced capabilities accessible to anyone, regardless of technical expertise.
”Agentic AI is a big part of how consumers and businesses will interact with the web in the future,” said John Acunto, CEO of Infinite Reality, in a statement. “The Touchcast technology has immediate applications across our entire business portfolio and will no doubt provide our customers with instant benefits – whether those customers are Napster subscribers and artists, global Fortune 500 brands, or small businesses. What Edo Segal and his team have developed at Touchcast will no doubt accelerate Infinite Reality’s mission to lead a transition to a more immersive, personalized and conversational web.”
Segal is a serial entrepreneur and AI pioneer who has spent over two decades building companies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human communication. Segal is leading breakthrough innovations in how people access and share expertise through AI, fundamentally reimagining human-AI collaboration. Prior to Touchcast, he founded and successfully sold multiple companies including Relegence (acquired by AOL), Brainboost (acquired by Answers.com), and Screencaster (acquired by Livestream), consistently positioning himself at the forefront of technological transformation.
“Joining forces with Infinite Reality represents the ideal next chapter for Touchcast,” said Segal. “From day one, our mission has been to humanize AI— moving beyond chatbots to create intelligent, emotionally resonant experiences that feel intuitive and alive. iR not only shares that belief and has the platform to bring our technology to scale across industries and audiences, but together we can empower a new generation of creators and businesses to deliver expertise, storytelling, and service in ways that were unimaginable until now.”
“With LLMs, with this big breakthrough, it facilitates so many different things for us,” said Segal. “We’re entering the state where the world models really allow us to create what used to require a tremendous amount of effort and time, which is really where these projects went to die. It now does it automatically.”
He said the company can take any website, any commerce website, and automatically create an entire store that’s a full 3D experience, literally with one click.
He did a demo of his Mentorverse doing just that, using agentic AI to create a new website for VentureBeat in just a quick minute or so. It had its own agent, a human-like greeter, and then displayed stories on the site in 3D.
“Agentic AI automatically created what you’re seeing on the screen, doing what used to take a year of work and cost a million dollars to do,” Segal said. “Now this is a click away and it could happen for any website.”
I had him switch to GamesBeat and it worked fine. There were some glitches, but it all happened in a minute or so. He also showed a more polished demo of a website for Imperial College, where professors had their own virtual twins who could talk with students 24/7. Touchcast has raised $60 million to date, and one of its biggest customers was Accenture. A year ago, it launched a strategic deal with Microsoft.
“Joining with IR is the next big chapter at a time where AI is exploding,” said Segal. “We feel like we have a few years headstart.”
Touchcast itself has 70 employees.
“The acquisition of Touchcast marks our largest transaction thus far, and represents a perfect continuation of our strategic growth trajectory, building on the momentum from the iconic Napster acquisition and recent $3 billion funding round,” said Shah. “The addition of Touchcast’s agentic AI technology serves as a powerful building block for our platform as we look to provide our customers with the tools they need to succeed in the modern AI-powered era.”
