Infinite Reality Reveals Multibillion-Dollar Mystery Investor

Now claiming a north of $15 billion valuation, Napster buyer Infinite Reality has officially revealed the identity of the mysterious investor behind its $3 billion January raise.

Despite its size, that raise didn’t make too big a splash in the music world, where Infinite Reality is best known for its Napster acquisition. But in January, the Norwalk-headquartered “innovation company” said it’d scored $3 billion in capital “from a private investor whose portfolio focuses on global technology and real estate investments.”

(On LinkedIn, Infinite Reality is still pointing to a Connecticut headquarters. Yesterday, though, the company unveiled plans to turn a “60-acre site in Fort Lauderdale into a next-generation technology and entertainment campus” housing its main offices.)

Unsurprisingly, the massive round, the huge valuation, and the lack of concrete investor details raised questions. And the speculation certainly didn’t let up when Infinite Reality announced its $207 million Napster buyout one month ago; the disclosure of a $500 million play for AI business Touchcast followed last week.

Enter a roughly 3,500-word deep dive, published by Forbes yesterday, into Infinite Reality’s history, funding, presence in the metaverse space, and more.

(Another pertinent parenthetical: Infinite Reality CEO John Acunto is said to be “writing a book with Forbes Books, a licensed partner of Forbes,” the appropriate outlet acknowledged.)

Dialing in on brass-tacks takeaways, the “Magic Money” piece describes steadily rising valuations for Infinite Reality thanks to a variety of all-stock acquisitions. Among the latter are purchases of Drone Racing League, tech company Landvault, and a whole lot else.

Long story short, Infinite Reality was worth $1 billion in January 2022 and, following the previously highlighted Touchcast play, claimed an astonishing $15.5 billion valuation, per Forbes.

As the deals and the rising valuations were made possible by major raises, the focus rather quickly turned to the identity of the purported multibillion-dollar investor.

It’s against this backdrop that Infinite Reality took the opportunity to shed additional light on the situation.

“We have decided to publicly share that Sterling Select, a venture development firm associated with Sterling Equities and the Katz family, represents the significant $3 billion investor that the company announced earlier this year,” Sterling Select managing partner Christopher Steele communicated.

Owing again to the many moving parts at hand, we’ll have to settle for a top-level view here. First, Sterling Equities’ website bills former Mets owner Fred Wilpon as a co-founder, with his brother-in-law Saul Katz (and several different Katz family members) described as a partner.

Next, not stopping with the statement, Steele put out a follow-up LinkedIn post – including a clarification about exactly how the Sterling businesses fit into the picture.

“For further clarity,” he wrote, “Infinite Reality is a Sterling Select investment. Sterling Equities is not part of the $3B investment into Infinite Reality.”

Per LinkedIn, Select is a “venture development and investment platform affiliated with Sterling Equities.”

(Not tackled by Forbes or mentioned by Steele are the far-from-subtle Infinite Reality blog posts about tech innovations in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.)

Lastly, Steele also addressed the Forbes report’s breakdown of purported cash-flow problems at and vendor lawsuits against Infinite Reality, which one anonymous exec said has access only to a portion of the $3 billion tranche at present.

“It is not uncommon with many fast-growing companies,” Steele weighed in, “especially ones with a voracious M&A appetite, that there are differences of opinions and approaches and also with disruption to cash flow and operations. In fact, we ourselves were part of that group. In the end, however, we became ardent supporters.”