KPMG Steps into the Metaverse and Invests $30M in Web3 Employee Training

To assist its staff and clients in pursuing development prospects in the digital era, KPMG, one of the Big Four accounting firms in Canada and the United States, has announced the creation of its first metaverse collaboration center.

KPMG is embracing the metaverse with this new collaboration hub that uses Web3 to link staff, clients, and others. The metaverse center is the "signature piece" of the company's $30 million investment in Web3 experiences this year.

The hub will be centered on education, collaboration, training, events, and workshops, according to a Tuesday report by Fortune. Cliff Justice, the U.S. leader of enterprise innovation at KPMG, claimed that while it is already being used for these things, KPMG plans to hire people to build it and expand it over time.

“The way we look at it, it’s not just augmented reality and virtual reality. It’s really the next iteration of the internet. It really encompasses everything that the internet would encompass, but it’s more interactive,” Cliff Justice, KPMG U.S. leader of enterprise innovation, told Fortune of the metaverse and Web3.

The company's long-term goal is to investigate more possible metaverse use cases in industries including health care, consumer goods, retail, media, and financial services.

‍Laura Newinski, deputy chair, and chief operating officer at KPMG in the U.S., said:

"The metaverse is a market opportunity, a way to re-engage talent, and a path to connect people across the globe through a new collaborative experience."

As part of its innovation strategy, the companies will keep looking into opportunities in the crypto and Web 3.0 sectors, as well as co-creating innovative tools and solutions that offer crucial insights, introducing immersive learning and development platforms, hiring talent to contribute knowledge, and navigating the shifting intersection of the physical and digital worlds.

Interest in the metaverse has increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As more people work and attend school online, there has been a rise in the quest for strategies to make internet communication more lifelike. One of the largest American banks, JPMorgan, made news earlier this year when it published a paper calling metaverse technology a "one trillion-dollar opportunity" and set up its own virtual headquarters in the Decentraland metaverse.

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