John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity Technologies, speaks during the TechCrunch Disrupt 2018 summit in San Francisco on September 5, 2018.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Unity shares rose 12% on Tuesday after the game tool maker’s announcement. a marketplace for artificial intelligence software which positions it as a platform into the hottest part of the tech industry.
Unity customers who use its game engine software to make games for phones, consoles and virtual reality headsets will be able to choose from software that can, for example, generate game dialogue or textures and graphics using artificial intelligence from independent companies such as Inworld AI. or Polyhive.
AI companies will be able to distribute their software to game developers and charge for it through Unity’s Asset Store.
Unity’s price hike comes as company officials have talked in recent weeks about the potential they see in AI.
“I think AI is going to change gaming in some pretty fundamental ways. One of them is that it’s going to make games faster, cheaper and better,” said John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity. Conversation the Associated Press published on Monday. “It’s already happening.”
Separately, the company also received an overweight rating and a $48 target price from Wells Fargo analyst Brian Fitzgerald in a note on Tuesday.
Fitzgerald and his team said investors may see Unity’s current share price as a buying opportunity and that the company could expand its business beyond gaming, with “digital twins” and other simulation products for businesses.
“While we recognize that the consolidation of the interactive entertainment industry may drive the development and use of proprietary game development tools/assets by large studios over the long term, we believe in Unity’s strong competitive position in this space,” Fitzgerald wrote.
The note also said the “metaverse” hype is dying down, creating a buying opportunity.
Before Unity began turning investors’ attention to AI, it was closely associated with headset efforts such as Target‘s because its software can be used to create virtual reality applications.
Earlier this month, Apple said that VR apps built with Unity will supported on Vision Proits headset is due out early next year.
Riccitiello doesn’t like the term metaverse, a word Apple never uses. “I always thought that word was loaded and kind of silly,” he told the AP.