Item 1. Business
Item 1. Business
General
Unity is the world's leading platform for creating and growing interactive, real-time 3D ("RT3D") content and experiences. Our comprehensive set of software, including AI solutions, supports creators through the entire development lifecycle as they build, run, and grow immersive, real-time 2D and 3D content for mobile phones, tablets, PCs, consoles, and augmented and virtual reality devices. Our platform is used by creators of all types - such as developers, artists, and designers - to build content for various industries, including gaming, retail, automotive, architecture, engineering, and construction.
Unity was originally founded as Over the Edge Entertainment in Denmark in 2004. In 2009, we reorganized as a Delaware corporation and changed our name to Unity Software Inc. Our principal corporate offices are located in San Francisco, California. We completed our initial public offering in September 2020 and our common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "U". In November 2022, we completed the transactions contemplated by the Agreement and Plan of Merger (the "Merger Agreement"), dated July 13, 2022, by and among Unity Software Inc., Ursa Aroma Merger Subsidiary Ltd., a company organized under the laws of the State of Israel and a direct wholly owned subsidiary of Unity, and ironSource Ltd., a company organized under the laws of the State of Israel ("ironSource", and such transactions, the "ironSource Merger").
Our platform consists of two complementary sets of solutions: Create Solutions and Grow Solutions which together comprise our strategic portfolio surrounding the Unity Engine, Cloud and Monetization.
Create Solutions
Our Create Solutions are a robust set of tools and services used to build, ship and run high-definition, real-time 2D and 3D content. Designed for developers, these tools and services are used across a range of industries ranging from games to aerospace, construction to retail, medical to manufacturing, and beyond. Create Solutions includes our custom real-time 3D engine and development environment with a high-definition render pipeline; AI-driven content creation and workflow enhancements, graphics, animation, and audio tools; navigation, networking, user interface tools and more. Enhanced by cloud services including asset management, DevOps tools and multiplayer game support, creators can leverage our products and extensibility to easily edit, run, and iterate interactive RT3D and 2D experiences that can be created once and deployed to a variety of platforms.
Grow Solutions
Our Grow Solutions are our Monetization products, which offer customers the ability to grow and engage their user base and monetize their content—from 2D puzzle games to multiplayer, multi-platform games, or other 3D interactive content—irrespective of whether the content was created in Unity. Many of our customers create games and applications with the purpose of building a profitable business. This requires both the acquisition of end-users at a reasonable cost and the monetization of these end-users as they engage with the content over time. We help our customers grow their businesses in the mobile app ecosystem by offering a comprehensive suite of products designed to help customers successfully scale their businesses, including our mediation platform, ad networks, and offerwall. In addition, Supersonic from Unity is our publishing solution, which allows small studios and independent developers who require expertise in publishing their mobile games to launch their apps and maximize their commercial success, through the use of a combination of tools, full transparency, and a team of industry experts. Finally, Aura from Unity enables app developers to connect with users through a unique channel that offers on-device app discovery, while allowing telecom operators to better engage and monetize their users throughout the device lifecycle.
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Our Customers and Creator Community
Our globally diverse customers range from the largest enterprises to mid-market companies, to government and non-profit institutions, to mid-sized, small, and independent businesses and individuals across a variety of industries.
We have a very large, active, and highly engaged global community of RT3D creators. The scale of our creator community provides us with a significant competitive advantage, and by incentivizing third-party platforms to strategically partner and integrate with us, we are able to further expand our community. Third-party platforms partner with Unity to make it easy for our creators to deploy content onto their platforms. These partnerships help us to maximize audience-reach for our customers and retain our platform’s position as the leading hub for RT3D content creation.
Competition
We primarily compete with other content development tools and monetization services. Most of these competitors offer point solutions that represent a subset of the offerings on our platform:
• Create Solutions: We primarily compete against proprietary game engines built in-house by large game studios, as well as Cocos2d-x (Chukong Technologies), Godot, and Unreal Engine (Epic Games), which offer game development tools primarily serving the PC games and mobile games sectors, and, in the case of Unreal Engine (Epic Games), industries beyond gaming. Outside of gaming, we also compete with other development platforms that offer 2D and 3D design products.
• Grow Solutions: We operate in a fragmented ecosystem composed of privately held companies up to select divisions of large, well-established companies. The large companies in our ecosystem may play multiple different roles given the breadth of their business. Examples of these large companies are Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Tencent. Most of these companies are also our partners and customers. Examples of other companies we compete against include AppLovin, Voodoo, and Digital Turbine.
We believe that the principal competitive factors in our market are:
• cross-platform deployability;
• the pace and quality of new product innovation;
• product capabilities, including flexibility, scalability, performance, security, and reliability;
• integration with existing platforms;
• high-quality customer support, training, and services;
• brand recognition and reputation;
• return on investment of sales and marketing efforts;
• volume and leverage of user data and analytics;
• price and affordability of our solutions and customer economics;
• ease of use of products; and
• ability to expand to adjacent industries.
We believe we compete favorably with respect to these factors. Refer to "Item 1A. Risk Factors" for a discussion of risks related to competition.
Privacy and Data Security
Creative assets, performance and user data are critical to our customers’ businesses. We devote considerable resources to our security program, regularly testing the security of user assets utilized by our services, and developing easy-to-use features that content creators can leverage to enhance the
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security of their creative products. Our team of security practitioners, working in partnership with peers across our company, works to identify and mitigate risks, assess our security measures against industry standards and best practices, and continue to evaluate ways to improve.
Intellectual Property
We rely on a combination of patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, license agreements, confidentiality procedures, non-disclosure agreements, employee non-disclosure and invention assignment agreements, and other legal and contractual rights to establish and protect our proprietary rights. Refer to "Item 1A. Risk Factors" for a discussion of risks related to our intellectual property.
As of December 31, 2023, we had 246 issued utility patents in the United States that expire between 2029 and 2041, 47 issued utility patents in non-U.S. jurisdictions, and 90 utility patent applications (including 6 provisional applications and 16 active PCT applications) pending in the United States and globally. As of such date, we also had 1 registered design patent in the United States, 36 registered design patents in non-U.S. jurisdictions and 4 pending design patent applications, 1 of which is in the United States. While we believe our patents and patent applications in the aggregate are important to our competitive position, no single patent or patent application is material to us as a whole.
We also have trademark rights in our name and other brand indicia and have trademark registrations for select marks in the United States and other jurisdictions around the world. We also have registered domain names for websites that we use in our business, such as www.unity.com and similar variations.
We control access to and use of our proprietary technology and other confidential information through the use of internal and external controls, including contractual protections with employees, contractors, customers, and partners. It is our practice to enter into confidentiality agreements with our third parties in order to limit access to, disclosure, and use of, our confidential information and proprietary information. We further control the use of our proprietary technology and intellectual property through provisions in our terms of service. We intend to pursue additional intellectual property protection to the extent we believe it would be beneficial and cost effective.
Human Capital Management
As of December 31, 2023, we had a total of 6,748 full-time employees, across 57 offices and in 19 countries. We also engage contractors and consultants. We had 3,844 employees in technical roles, which accounted for approximately 57% of our total headcount. In addition, our geographic diversification enhances our ability to retain and attract talent, and as of December 31, 2023, approximately 75% of our full-time employees were located outside of the United States.
In the fourth quarter of 2023, we initiated a number of steps to reduce our cost structure. For example, we announced and substantially completed plans to scale back our office footprint by approximately 14 locations, and in the first quarter of 2024, we announced plans to reduce approximately 1,800 employee roles, or approximately 25% of our then-current workforce. While we believe these steps were necessary to position Unity for long-term and profitable growth, we still believe that having a strong culture is essential for driving that long-term success. Our culture is fueled by our commitment to our values, inclusion, and social impact, making Unity an attractive place for top talent to work and grow. We invest in our culture in many ways, including a Unity Leadership Program run by senior leaders, frequent Town Hall meetings, executive roundtables, manager and employee development opportunities, and a global Workplace Experience team dedicated to curating local cultural events. Unity's benefit offerings are designed to meet the varied and evolving needs of a diverse workforce.
Government Regulations
Our worldwide business activities are subject to various laws, rules, and regulations of the United States as well as of foreign governments. Compliance with these laws, rules, and regulations has not had, and is not expected to have, a material effect upon our capital expenditures, results of operations, or competitive position, and we do not currently anticipate material capital expenditures for environmental control facilities. Nevertheless, compliance with existing or future governmental regulations, including, but
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not limited to, those pertaining to global trade, business acquisitions, consumer and data protection, and taxes, could have a material impact on our business in subsequent periods. Refer to "Item 1A. Risk Factors" for a discussion of these potential impacts.
Available Information
Our investor relations website is https://investors.unity.com/ and we encourage investors to use it as a way of easily finding information about us. Copies of our reports on Forms 10-K, Forms 10-Q, and Forms 8-K, may be obtained, free of charge, electronically on this website as soon as reasonably practicable after we file such material with, or furnish such material to, the SEC.