Brisbane virtual music star creator Splash scores $27m in funding

A local entrepreneur has landed $27m of investment to expand his music-making game that attracts 10 million plays a month and is creating virtual stars.

A Brisbane-based serial entrepreneur has landed $27m in funding for his global music-making game Splash.

Founder and CEO Stephen Phillips will use some of the funds to boost the size of the Splash team from 38 to 50 staff over coming months.

The Fortitude Valley-based company employs gamers, musicians, tech professionals and other creatives.

Using platforms like Roblox, Splash allows people to create, perform and connect with live music, inside virtual worlds, using AI-powered tools and video games.

Since launching in May last year, Splash has amassed more than 130 million plays and now averages 10 million plays a month.

A virtual character called Kai has became the first star to emerge from the game with almost 1.9m view of her title track “Breathe Again” on YouTube since its release in late June.

“With over 7.8 million people who have made music in Splash, we are on track to one day host the world’s must-attend virtual performances,” Mr Phillips said.

He said Splash was an evolution of the concept in popular games like Guitar Hero.

“In Guitar Hero, players were pretending to make music, but in Splash players they are actually making music,” he said.

Splash also has a suite of composition and production tools to help musicians create and edit compositions and experiment with a number of AI-powered instruments.

Mr Phillips is no stranger to success. He sold his last business Brisbane-based WeAreHunted, which created charts aggregated from music being discussed online, to Twitter in 2013.

He was part of the Twitter Music team in the United States until 2015 before returning to Brisbane to start Splash in 2017.

Splash CEO and founder Stephen Phillips.

Mr Phillips said his US experience showed him that Brisbane had as much “great talent” as anywhere else in the world and that he wanted to contribute in a meaningful way to growing the city’s tech scene.

The $27m in Series A funding has come from Amazon’s Alexa Fund, BITKRAFT Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Australian based King River Capital.

“We are thrilled to have incredible investors in our corner who believe in our mission to

launch the next generation of superstars and become the place where millions of people

perform live daily,” Mr Phillips said.

King River Capital founding partner Chris Barter said Splash had developed the most

innovative take on in-game music tech his firm had seen.

“Its technology has opened up music creation to millions of people by allowing anyone to learn and play music on-line to a professional standard quickly and inexpensively,” he said.

“And the fact they can then perform to large audiences in on-line venues is already hugely popular.

“Today’s youth play games and socialise on-line in very different ways to previous generations and they’re showing the tech industry what’s possible, what they want and what the future holds.”