After more than $70 million and one bruising VR retreat, High Fidelity discovered that the most valuable piece of its virtual world was the thing nobody could see: the sound of people sharing a room.
Clubhouse is a voice-first social app built by Alpha Exploration Co. It started as an invite-only live audio room platform that briefly mesmerized Silicon Valley in 2020-2021, then pivoted to friend-centric voice messaging and custom AI voices as the live-audio boom cooled.