Linden Lab

Linden Research, Inc., trading as Linden Lab, is an American technology company founded in 1999 and headquartered in San Francisco, with an additional office in Atlanta and, per Wikipedia, further offices in Boston, Seattle, Davis (California) and Virginia, plus remote staff who collaborate using Second Life technology. The company is best known for Second Life, a 3D virtual world launched in 2003 in which residents create environments, objects and experiences, socialize by text and voice, join groups, and buy and sell millions of virtual items on a marketplace. The company describes Second Life as having been used by millions of people, with billions of dollars transacted among users in its economy.

In 2019 Linden Lab unveiled Tilia, a registered money services business and licensed money transmitter built to power virtual economies; in April 2024 Thunes announced an agreement to acquire Tilia LLC. Over its history the company has built and divested several other products, including the Sansar social VR platform (opened in creator beta in 2017 and later sold to Wookey), the Blocksworld building game (acquired in 2013 and later transferred to Ukrainian studio Fortell Games), the Desura digital distribution service (acquired 2013, sold to Bad Juju Games in 2015), and the discontinued titles Patterns and Creatorverse.

Management listed by the company includes Brad Oberwager as Executive Chairman, founder Philip Rosedale as Chief Technology Officer, Aston Waldman as Chief Financial Officer, Cammy Bergren as Chief of Staff, Trina Cooley as Chief People Officer, David J. Kim as General Counsel, Jerome Despret as Senior VP of Engineering and Anya Kanevsky as Senior VP of Product. The board includes Oberwager, J. Randall (Randy) Waterfield and Rosedale.

Founding story

Philip Rosedale created the internet video conferencing product FreeVue in 1995, which was acquired by RealNetworks, where he became Vice President and CTO at age 27. He left RealNetworks in 1999 and, using proceeds from that period, founded Linden Lab (incorporated as Linden Research). Rosedale has said his interest in virtual worlds predated Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and stemmed in part from experiments during his physics studies at the University of California San Diego, with the ambition renewed by advances in computing and his attendance at Burning Man. The company's early focus was hardware — an immersive 360-degree virtual reality prototype known as "The Rig" — before shifting to the software environment Linden World and then to the user-centered Second Life. During a 2001 investor meeting Rosedale observed that participants responded most to the collaborative, creative potential of the product, prompting a shift away from an objective-driven gaming focus toward a user-created, community-driven experience. The name "Linden" comes from 333 Linden Street in San Francisco, the company's first premises; the hexagonal logo references the linden or Tilia tree.

Business model

Linden Lab operates virtual world platforms in which users create and sell content. Second Life supports a user economy where tens of thousands of creators develop environments and sell millions of virtual items on a marketplace, profiting from those sales; the company reports billions of dollars transacted among users. Its Tilia unit was established as a registered money services business and licensed money transmitter to power virtual economies.

Sources describe an in-world economy in which creators profit from marketplace sales of virtual items and in which billions of dollars have been transacted among users, with money movement handled by the licensed money transmitter Tilia; specific company revenue streams are not detailed.

Traction

GamesBeat reported in December 2024 that Linden Lab had spent $1.3 billion building Second Life and paid $1.1 billion to creators. The company states Second Life has been enjoyed by millions of people with billions of dollars transacted among users, and that tens of thousands of creators continually develop new environments and sell millions of virtual items. Wikipedia lists 245 employees. Second Life passed its 20th birthday in June 2023 and 21 years of operation in June 2024.

Latest developments

In April 2024 Thunes announced an agreement to acquire Tilia LLC. Second Life's mobile public beta went live in June 2024, and beta testing of terrain updates, 2K textures and mirrors began in April 2024. In March 2026 Linden Lab announced the appointment of Jerome Despret as Senior Vice President of Engineering, and founder and CTO Philip Rosedale continued public commentary on virtual worlds, AI and the metaverse through 2025 and 2026.