NTT Investing $15.7 Million in ngi group

In May, the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) announced that it would sign a business and capital tie-up deal with the ngi group, the Japanese start-up behind virtual world developer 3Di.jp and the open-source world JinSei. NTT formed a 10 billion yen investment partnership for the purchase and was set to purchase new shares from ngi  at the amount of 1.5 billion yen, for an 8% stake, and 200 million yen, for a 40% stake, from 3D--bringing the total investment to approximately $15.7 million. 

"NTT will use the ngi group's 3-D image processing technology to develop a system for managing virtual spaces on its fiber-optic based next-generation network (NGN)," according to a Nikkei news English article that, somehow, it seems everyone has missed since then except for UgoTrade. "It will build such systems on behalf of companies that want to sell goods and host online advertising forums, among other businesses. It will begin receiving orders through such subsidiaries as NTT Communications Corp. as early as October."

You can also read a Google translated press release here, which makes it sound like further investment is planned for down the line:

"NTT-IP is a fund management company (NTT Investment PATONAZUFANDO investment fund) through self-ngi-held shares (8.66 percent of outstanding shares) for about 14.5 billion acquisition in the future. In addition NTT-IP is a third party allocation of 3 Di acceptance of the company's outstanding shares about 40 percent of the approximately 1.8 billion shares acquired in the future."