Peer, the AI-native platform reinventing the internet as a persistent, explorable universe, today launched its Global Simulation—a real-time digital Earth where users show up as avatars, connect by location, and build relationships in a living, spatial network.
Peer is designed as a native environment for agentic AI—an operating system where AI can move, perceive, and act within a shared world. By giving AI form and placing it in a common, persistent, and spatial environment, Peer creates a natural interface for human-AI interaction. It can be a Web3 or Web2 experience, said Tony Tran, CEO of Peer, in an interview with GamesBeat.
“We’re launching the world’s first operating system where we’re giving AI a form and a place to live. And the construct that we’ve developed is it works on all devices. We’ve built everything from scratch. And so the idea is that we’ve built a planet wide simulation,” said Tran. “It works on every kind of device. And because we built it from scratch, it can work on headsets as well, but we’ve made it available on phones.”
To date, the Newport Beach, California-based company has raised $68.5 million to date, including $10.5 million two months ago and $3 million a few weeks ago. The firm is raising more money, and it has 65 people. The app is available now on the Google and Apple app stores.
He added, “The main idea is that we’ve developed this Global Simulation where the main experience is tied to geography, so that we can tie the real world to the digital substrate, and we just go from there. You could jump right into Japan and experience Japan or walk around as your avatar. And all the same time, you have your AI over your shoulder floating next to you. And this AI will have triggers that are tied to both your IRL (in real life) location, so wherever you go in the physical world, it knows where you’ve been, where your friends are, and how long you stay at certain places, in order to to acquire that trigger.”
Every user is paired with their own AI agent—an intelligent companion that learns, evolves, and operates alongside them. This makes AI feel personal, useful, and embodied—an essential step toward making AI adoption universal and seamlessly woven into daily life.
“What excites us the most about this is it gives everybody a presence, in the way that we used to back in the days of the early internet. You see a person’s avatar and you get that sense of connection right away. My dream is actually to build the first Ready Player One type of experience,” he said. “It’s maybe five, ten years down the line. But today, we wanted to make it available on every device, so that people who can’t afford headsets can actually join in on this world.”
Together, they navigate a dynamic world where geography, memory, and imagination converge. And because Peer’s interface is grounded in real-world geography, it doesn’t just simulate the world—it connects to it, enabling AI to extend into physical reality through augmented reality and spatial computing.
“We’re not launching another app—we’re opening the portal to a new digital world,” said Tran. “Imagine a platform that grows with the virality of a social network but monetizes like a game. This is the start of something far bigger than social—it’s the foundation for the AI economy.”
The map becomes the medium
At the core of Peer is a dynamic 3D map of the world—a new substrate where digital experiences are anchored to real places. This isn’t a game world or escapist simulation—it’s a living layer that blends the physical and digital into one continuous environment. Users appear as avatars tied to real-world and virtual locations, with full control over their visibility and presence.
Powered by GPS and VPS (Virtual Positioning System), Peer transforms the map into an interactive space where people can explore, drop content, discover others, and build communities. Unlike traditional apps or games, this is a digital reality that starts from the real world—making it feel authentic, grounded, and alive. Where Pokémon Go limited you to walking around your IRL location, Peer lets you travel anywhere in the world and then jump into the map to explore.
“Peer is the best of Roblox, Pokémon Go and Discord, all together and all powered by AI,” said Tran. “It’s persistent, composable and built to scale beyond entertainment into utility, commerce and creation.”
A platform for presence
Peer’s launch includes:
A real-time simulation of Earth, enabling seamless movement and avatar presence across the globe
Customizable avatars, giving users full control over how they appear—socially, partially, or invisibly
Location-aware presence, keeping users grounded in the physical world without ever leaving the app
A spatial interface built for discovery, not addiction—replacing endless feeds with meaningful proximity
Another Peer breakthrough is Composable World Layering: one persistent world, infinite personal experiences. Two users in the same virtual Times Square might see different events, ads, or portals—each tailored to them. It’s a new canvas for creators, brands, and AI to build uniquely for every person.
Tran said the company can enable any kind of blockchain or cryptocurrency that it wishes.
The agentic world
In that place in Japan, Peer will be able to give you information and insights around that area. The company built its own map, and it created its own game engine as well.
“We feel that AI can become indispensable,” Tran said. “We can generate anything. We can generate living worlds. We can generate the map to New York City. You can view a Stone Age version of New York City, if you decide you want that to see that.”
The tech is different from Pokémon Go as you can zoom in and step into the map and walk around in your avatar form, as you would in a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game. You can do so in first person or third person. It can tap the actual weather and that can influence the world you see. And it’s a planet-wide experience. After saying that, Tran showed me the map of Paris and connected with team members there.
“It’s just a matter of me zooming in and jumping into the digital world,” he said.
With this virtual world, Tran said you can create treasure hunts for other people. Soon, Tran said the team will create cars that can drive you around the world or drop you off at any location you want.
“This is an agentic operating system,” Tran said. “You can ask your AI to go and maybe talk to somebody and create a connection. And so your AI will actually fly over to another person and say, ‘Hey, you know, would you like to connect with my owner?’”
He added, “If you’ve lost a cat, instead of posting posters on the street, your AI can go from person to person and ask and show an image and say, ‘Hey, have you seen this cat?’ And this is the where we can really make AI agentic. And it basically can clone the AI. You can have one talking to somebody on your behalf, and another one delivering a message to your mom or something like that.”
In this way, you can be in multiple places in the world at once, if you decide to send your agents out at the same time. You can own property and have it be verified on the blockchain, but Tran said the company spun out this tech as a separate company.
According to Tran, Peer is the first platform that lets the entire world enter the same persistent simulation—a planet-scale MMO tied to the real world—that is entirely accessible instantly from any mobile phone.
Unlike traditional games or closed virtual worlds that divide users by servers, regions, or gameplay loops, Peer opens access to a single, real-time world where anyone on Earth can step in together. No lobbies. No waiting rooms. No fragmentation. It’s the gateway to infinite, immersive experiences powered by AI.
“We’ve built a platform with infinite entry points,” said Tran. “From São Paulo to Seoul, anyone with a phone can step into the simulation and begin their journey in an AI-powered world.”
Download the Peer app today at the App Store, Google Play or peer.inc.
By combining a simulation of Earth with generative AI, avatars, and real-time spatial interaction, Peer creates a new operating system for human-AI coexistence. Peer is currently rolling out its first phase and will expand into AI agents, immersive worldbuilding, and custom hardware.
Companies can advertise their brands in the world, and the company can do “dynamic layering,” where someone could zoom in on a billboard and see details that others cannot.
Origins
Tran’s team got going in July 2021, including a core group of people who worked on an app called Zenly. They had spent five years on that prior project, and it was acquired and then shut down.
“We saw the the AI wave coming ahead. And what we wanted to basically people and AI together inside of the same experience, and where the AI is both tied to the digital world, which we call VPS, virtual positioning system, where inside the AI knows and can navigate this digital world, but at the same time, it’s tied to the physical world through GPS on your phone,” Tran said. “The idea is, when you are in your your physical body, the AI will basically just be prominent on your phone, leveraging your GPS and everything that it knows about the real world from our maps. But then, once you enter this world as an avatar, you can then begin your journey inside this digital world, which we see will start to look very different.”
You might, for instance, see what Paris looked like in the 1600s or see the sci-fi world of Blade Runner.
“We have broomsticks, where you can fly around,” he said.
The company lets people use its engine to create their own 3D objects for use inside the world. It can thus be a combination of company-created objects or user-generated objects. Businesses will be able to enter the world and create their own physical spaces inside the virtual world, and they can verify that on the blockchain. The team has 65 people.
