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Sandbox VR Profile: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status

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  • Category: location-based entertainment
  • Pandemic layoffs: 80% of staff, including the whole engineering team (Layoffs.fyi and Protocol, May–June 2020)
  • Last updated: 2026-09-25

Pandemic-role map

  • Reader shorthand: a celebrity-backed chain of virtual-reality venues that lost all its revenue when they closed in 2020, cut 80% of its staff, put its U.S. subsidiary through Chapter 11, and has since grown past 80 locations.
  • What Sandbox VR did for customers: ran rooms where groups of up to six played full-body VR games of about 20 minutes.
  • What broke in the pandemic: its venues closed, and CEO Steve Zhao said the company had effectively lost "100% of the revenue."
  • Relief role: none; it was not a lender or relief provider.
  • Own relief: three forgiven PPP loans totaling about $1 million: $754,363 to Sandbox VR, Inc. in April 2020, and $241,252 to two Sandbox VR LLCs in March 2021.

Founders, Executives, and Investors

Steve Zhao founded Sandbox VR in 2016 and was its CEO in 2020 and in 2026. Siqi Chen, an earlier CEO, left the company in 2020.

Road to VR reported in 2020 that Sandbox had raised more than $80 million, from Andreessen Horowitz, Alibaba, Floodgate Ventures, Stanford University, Triplepoint Capital and CRCM, with a round led by celebrities including Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom and Will Smith. By March 2026 the company said it had raised more than $138 million, naming Andreessen Horowitz, Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, Gobi Partners and Craft, with individual backers Timberlake, Perry, Kevin Durant and Smith.

Business Before the Pandemic

Sandbox ran venues in North America and Asia, with in-house games and licensed ones such as a Star Trek: Discovery experience. The Wall Street Journal reported, as cited by Road to VR, that before the lockdowns the company was close to raising more than $50 million in equity to open about 20 new locations. That round was put on hold in March 2020.

What the Pandemic Changed

In the week before May 8, 2020, Sandbox laid off its entire engineering team, and its CEO said he was laying himself off as well, according to Layoffs.fyi. Protocol then reported that 80% of the staff had been cut, leaving a crew of about 20. Zhao told Protocol in early June that the company had effectively lost all of its revenue.

Sandbox VR, Inc. of Pleasanton, California, had already received a $754,363.32 PPP loan, approved April 30, 2020, with 11 jobs reported and the proceeds marked for payroll ($703,631) and mortgage interest ($50,732). In August 2020 Glostation USA Inc., the name under which Sandbox operates in the United States, filed for Chapter 11, along with a number of associated companies, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Woodland Hills, California.

Business After the First Shock

Glostation emerged from Chapter 11 in late November 2020 under a court-approved reorganization plan, and Sandbox said it had restructured its remaining debts. Bloomberg reported that the parent, Sandbox VR Inc, was funding the subsidiary, including a $13.6 million restructuring of secured debt.

On March 12, 2021 two more PPP loans were approved at the same Pleasanton address: $183,166.40 to Sandbox VR Pop-Up LLC, with 44 jobs reported, and $58,085.12 to Sandbox VR San Mateo LLC, with 11. All three loans were forgiven with interest: the first in October 2021 for $765,259.35, the two 2021 loans in August 2022 for $185,766.35 and $58,901.54.

Where the Company Is Now

In March 2026, marking its 10th anniversary, Sandbox VR said it had passed $300 million in lifetime sales and more than 80 locations in 13 countries on five continents, run through franchised and company-owned venues. It reported more than 5 million lifetime players and nearly 150,000 a month. Its Netflix titles include Squid Game Virtuals, which it said had passed $50 million in sales since 2023, and Stranger Things: Catalyst. It announced a 25-location rollout across the Middle East with franchise partner Apparel Group.

Source Notes

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