Meridian Raises $200M to Build the Spatial Web Protocol for Persistent 3D Online Worlds

New York, November 10, 2027 — Meridian, a 14-month-old infrastructure company, has closed a $200 million Series A round to develop SWP-1 (Spatial Web Protocol), a new internet layer designed to make persistent 3D worlds as accessible as a webpage is today.

The investment was led by a十六条 venture firm alongside Andreessen Horowitz and Coatue Management. Meridian will use the funds to expand its protocol engineering team, deploy edge nodes across 40 countries, and finalize the SWP-1 specification for submission to the IETF.

The Problem with Current Virtual Worlds

Today's online 3D environments — from massively multiplayer games to virtual collaboration spaces — require users to download dedicated clients, often several gigabytes in size. These applications run in silos: a Roblox world cannot easily interact with a Minecraft server, and virtual office spaces built on different platforms are mutually incompatible. The underlying networking protocols were designed for client-server architectures that were never meant to support truly shared, persistent spatial computing at internet scale.

Meridian's argument is that a new protocol layer — one that treats 3D space as a first-class network primitive — could solve all of these problems at once.

How SWP-1 Works

SWP-1 is a lightweight application-layer protocol that runs over standard HTTPS and WebTransport. It defines a universal spatial coordinate system, a shared object state model, and a discovery mechanism that lets 3D environments find and share assets with one another without requiring a common platform.

When a user visits a SWP-1 world through a compatible browser, the protocol streams a lightweight scene manifest — typically under 500KB — that describes the environment's geometry, physics rules, and interactive objects. The rendering happens client-side using WebGPU, while the protocol handles synchronization of object state across all participants in near real time.

Because SWP-1 is browser-native, there is no app store friction. A creator can share a link; a user clicks it; the world loads. No installation, no account linking across platforms, no proprietary launcher.

Early Adoption

Several early partners have already begun building on SWP-1. Architecture firm Gensler is piloting a collaborative design review tool that lets clients walk through building blueprints in real time from any browser. Game studio Super Evil Megacorp is porting a multiplayer arena to the protocol as a technical demonstration.

The open-source community is watching closely. An early draft of the SWP-1 specification is already available on Meridian's GitHub, and over 3,000 developers have joined the protocol's Discord server since the announcement.

Challenges

Interoperability standards are notoriously difficult to get right. The history of 3D web standards — from VRML to X3D to the glTF era — is littered with well-intentioned efforts that failed to achieve critical mass. Convincing major platform holders (Meta, Apple, Roblox Corporation) to adopt a shared protocol that erodes their proprietary ecosystems will be Meridian's tallest hurdle.

Security and moderation in persistent 3D spaces also remain unsolved at scale. A shared spatial protocol raises questions about how harassment, content moderation, and digital property rights function across environments that were never designed to know about each other.

Timeline

Meridian expects the IETF submission in early 2028, with a ratified experimental RFC by mid-year. Browser vendors Mozilla and Bromite have signaled preliminary support, though formal implementations will depend on the RFC outcome.

The $200 million round gives Meridian roughly two years of runway before it needs to demonstrate revenue. Whether SWP-1 becomes the TCP/IP of the spatial web — or another footnote in the history of ambitious internet protocols — will depend on whether developers actually build with it.