Introducing our newest product: Pluto is a virtual events platform where people can meet and collaborate in the metaverse.

Back in 2020, entrepreneur and investor Elad Gil had reached out to us with an interesting challenge: bring the spontaneity of real life into online meetings and digital events. While he had noticed the shift to remote work expanded the types of interactions people were willing to have without in-person contact, from fundraising to making friends, he realized the available video conferencing tools were still missing an important ingredient: serendipity. 

His idea was simple. Instead of talking to people in static rooms over video calls, what if people could meet anywhere and have more organic interactions and chance encounters? 

“During the pandemic, I got sick of all the virtual happy hours, birthday parties and company get-togethers. Fun random chance meetups largely died — you could no longer run into a friend or co-worker or interesting new person,” said Gil. This platform would bring back the naturalness of gatherings in less-structured surroundings and help build long-lasting communities in a digital space. 

Together, in only a few months, we turned the idea into a fully working product known as Pluto. In this immersive 3D web-based platform, people can instantly teleport to music venues, conference centers, a relaxing beach — and even Burning Man. Represented by a live video avatar, attendees can move around the world freely and naturally walk in and out of conversations, thanks to spatial audio.

Katsuya Noguchi and Fatima Sabar then co-founded a company in order to bring Pluto to market in 2021, where it received immediate interest from consumers and businesses. For companies, it’s the antidote to monotonous office hours and awkward virtual events. It gives teams an online space for meetups, conferences and collaboration that can be transformed into a branded, purpose-built environment. Figma, Canva and the Xoogler community group were some of the first companies to host virtual meetups in Pluto’s 3D worlds, which can be tailored to each brand’s needs.

We had grasped the phenomenal potential of Pluto from the beginning, when it was still just a concept, and it became especially apparent as we were building it. So when the opportunity arose, we decided to add Pluto to our growing portfolio of Fluxon Incubator products, which also includes Dory, a real time Q&A app for meetings, and OpenBracket, a web-based technical collaboration tool. 

“Fluxon has been pivotal to building scalable and high-quality video, audio and 3D technologies and we are excited that they will continue to expand the Pluto metaverse,” said Katsuya Noguchi, CEO and co-founder of Pluto.

Tens of thousands of users have already hung out, attended parties or become more acquainted in Pluto's worlds, and there have been over 5,000 corporate and social events. User feedback has been incredibly positive: reviews say it is “by far the best virtual event” and a “mind-blowing” experience that leaves people “feeling connected again” and helps teams to “be there without being there.” 

After the acquisition, we plan to expand Pluto’s features and capabilities, adding more content such as games and new worlds for users to explore and collaborate in. We also plan to make Pluto available for companies looking to host much larger branded events — from conferences to concerts. 

“We’re excited about the potential of the metaverse, and want to make it accessible for everyone — without the need for expensive devices and headsets,” said Erad Fridman, Fluxon CEO. “Want to host an offsite on the moon? Or a concert in the Arctic? Anything you can imagine becomes possible with Pluto.”

 Want to see what the future of online meetings and digital events looks like? Check out Pluto for yourself.