Google Spends $100 Million to Buy Avatars for TikTok

Alphabet’s eighth major acquisition was Alter.

We also covered the Google takeover of Raxium in February.

Alter was founded in 2020 by Facemoji. It specializes as a plug and play avatar vendor for gaming and social platforms. Twitter was one of several companies that contributed $3 million to seed capital.

Snapchat has created full-body avatars with face-mapping filters and avatars. Facebook and Insta also have these avatars. Google might also be creating its YouTube shorts platform for avatars, given that TikTok is being targeted. However, it is not clear if Google is just trying to catch up with Instagram and Facebook.