Unity Confirms Investment, Adds VMWare's Greene To Board

Unity Technologies, developer of the Unity game engine, has confirmed that it has secured $5.5 million in financing during a series A funding round, and announced the addition of VMware co-founder Diane Greene to its board of directors. News of the funding first appeared last week, but Unity declined to publicly comment on the matter at the time. As reported earlier, the round of investment was led by Sequoia Capital, but today's announcement revealed that Greene and Atari CEO David Gardner participated in the financing as well. Sequoia partner Roelof Botha will join Greene in becoming part of Unity's board. Greene is best known for co-founding Palo Alto-based virtualization software developer VMware in 1998, and served as the company's CEO until she was ousted by its board of directors last year. "When I first saw the quality of games which could be produced with the Unity engine in such a short development time and in a web browser, I was blown away!" Gardner said in a statement. "Pardon the pun, but it is a game changer and the Unity technology can greatly enhance the quality of browser visualization for many content providers! Then I met the people behind the technology and that is what turned me from a product fan to a company fan and investor." Unity Technologies is holding its annual Unite Conference this week in San Francisco. The event is targeted at users and potential licensees of the Unity development environment, from both the production and business ends. Said Botha of Sequoia's investment, "We are very excited to be involved with Unity Technologies at a time when the demand for interactive content continues to grow exponentially."