Blockchain Game Investment List - YGG SEA raises $15 million

Welcome to our master list of investments in blockchain games. Regularly updated, this is a list of every investment into blockchain game companies.

If you think there’s a deal we’ve missed, please email [email protected]

Total investments to-date during 2021: $4.0 billion

Total investments in 2020: $88 million

Total investments to-date: $5.4 billion

Total traditional investments (VCs, shares etc): $4.6 billion
Total blockchain investments (ICOs/token sales etc): $881 million

Significant companies (by investment raised)

Significant investors

Softbank (Sorare)
Atomico (Sorare)
Bessemer (Sorare)
Galaxy Digital (Immutable, Lucid Sight, Mythical Games)
Animoca Brands (Dapper Labs, Lucid Sight, Axie Infinity)
Hashed (Animoca Brands, Axie Infinity, Mythical Games, Enjin)
Coinbase (Animoca Brands, Dapper, Immutable)
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) (OpenSea, Dapper Labs, Yield Guild, Sky Mavis, Mythical, Forte)
Coatue (Dapper Labs, OpenSea)
WestCap (Mythical Games)
BitKraft (Yield Guild, Immutable)
Seven Seven Six (Sky Mavis, OpenSea, Sorare)
Paradigm (Parallel)
Sea Capital (Forte)
Griffin Gaming Partners (Forte)

Yield Guild Gaming’s southeast Asia subDAO – YGG SEA – has announced it’s closed $15 million in seed funding.

Spread across two raises, the lead investors were YGG and Infinity Ventures Crypto in August, and Crypto.com Capital, Animoca Brands, MindWorks Ventures, Poloniex, Jump Capital and Sembrani Kiqani by BRI Ventures in November.

Other investors included Circle, Digital Currency Group, Hashed, Polygon, Bukalapak, United Overseas Bank (UOB) Venture Management, Arca Funds, Evernew Capital, OKEx Blockdream Ventures, Yolo Ventures, SevenX Ventures, LongHash Ventures, Hashkey Group, Morningstar Ventures, Rise Capital, Dialectic, SweeperDAO, PetRock Capital, DNC Ventures, FBG Capital and Emfarsis.

YGG SEA will initially build its P2E operations in Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore and Thailand, supporting locally developed play-to-earn games in each country and acquiring game assets for the benefit of the guild’s player base.

Veteran US blockchain game developer Blockade Games has raised $5 million on a $23 million valuation. It’s been working on its squad RPG Neon District since 2018 and has completed several seed rounds previously.

Animoca Brands and Digital led this round, with angels such as Drew Austin (Redbeard Ventures), Roham Gharegozlou (Dapper Labs), Keith Grossman (TIME) and Meltem Demirors (Coinshares) involved.

Other investors included Flamingo DAO and Galaxy Interactive, while existing investors Xsquared Ventures and Polygon also participated.

Forte has raised $725 million in its Series B, taking its total raised to $900 million.

Sea Capital (the investment arm of Free Fire publisher Sea) and Kora Management led the round

Other investors included Animoca Brands, Big Bets (Huuuge Games), Overwolf, Playstudios, Warner Music Group, zVentures (Razer), and blockchain partners Cosmos, Polygon Studios, and Solana Ventures, as well as investors including Griffin Gaming Partners, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Tiger Global.

Mythical Games has closed a Series C funding round of $150 million on a $1.25 billion valuation.

The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, and includesd participation from D1 Capital, RedBird Capital, and The Raine Group, various US sports groups and existing investors.

Mythical has now raised $270 million for its blockchain gaming platform, which recently announced its first three development partners.

US startup Faraway has announced it’s raised a $21 million Series A round. This takes its total funding to $30 million.

The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Pantera Capital and Jump Capital also participating.

Faraway’s debut game – a browser-based shooter called Mini Royale: Nations – is already live and will deploy with NFTs and tokens onto the Solana blockchain from December onwards.

Uplandme has raised $18 million to scale its mobile blockchain game Upland.

The funding values the company at $300 million and was led by Animoca Brands, C3 Management, OneTeam Partners and Block.one.

NFT based sci-fi game Parallel has raised $50 million on a $500 million valuation, with Paradigm leading the round.

Existing investors such as Gabe Leydon, Polygon and NFTBigBrain also participated.

Parallel’s NFT trading volume is currently over $125 million, however, with the most expensive card selling for $1.1 million. Parallel takes 10% of every transaction, meaning the project has already raised $12.5 million in ETH.

The funding will enable it to build out its TCG design follows the conflict between five groups – or Parallels – of far future human evolution.

Hash Rush developer Vorto Gaming has raised $4 million to build out its games and its platform ecosystem, which is based on the NEAR blockchain.

Investors included Flow Ventures; LD Capital; Block0 Fund, Daedalus Syndicate; NEAR Foundation and others including Red Cave Ventures; ArkStream Capital; GFS Ventures; Polygon Studios Fund as well as funds from UAE and Hong Kong.

Vorto Gaming also recently raised $100,000 via an NFT sale for Hash Rush, which is due for a full public launch in early 2022.

Animoca Brands has raised $65 million by issuing new shares on a $2.2 billion valuation. Earlier in 2021 it raised $139 million on a $1 billion valuation.

Investors in the round included Liberty City Ventures, Ubisoft Entertainment, Sequoia China, Dragonfly Capital, Com2uS, Kingsway Capital, 10T Holdings, Token Bay Capital, Smile Group, Tess Ventures, MSA Capital, Octava Fund, Adit Ventures, Summer Capital, Sigitech Holdings, Black Anthem Ltd, Mirana Corp, and Justin Sun.

Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis has closed a $152 million Series B round, which values the company at $3 billion.

The lead investor was Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Accel, Paradigm, Seven Seven Six, FTX, Fabric, Samsung Next and other investors.

This takes Sky Mavis’ total funding from VCs to $161 million.

Dapper Labs has raised $250 million on a $7.6 billion valuation.

The raise follows the $305 million it received in March 2021, taking Dapper’s total investment to $607 million.

Existing investors Coatue and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the round with Google’s GV, Bond Capital and the Singapore government’s GIC investing for the first time.

French developer Sorare has announced its $680 million Series B round for its fantasy soccer game.

The round was led by SoftBank, with the participation of Atomico, Bessemer Ventures, D1 Capital, Eurazeo, IVP and Liontree, and existing investors.

The investment is the largest in the history of French technology and the largest in Europe for a Series B.

Sorare says it will use the cash to build out its team, expand to mobile as well as launching new games covering othere sports.

US startup Stardust has raised a $5 million Series A round, which was led by Framework Ventures.

Other investors included Kleiner Perkins, Blockchain Capital, Distributed Global, Maven 11, G1.vc, OP Crypto, Redbeard Ventures, and Lattice Capital.

There were also angel investors including Piers Kicks of Delphi Digital, Gabby Dizon of Yield Games, Sebastien Borget of The Sandbox, and Nikil Viswanathan of Alchemy.

Stardust is a platform enabling game developers to create blockchain games across the likes of Polygon, Solana, Immutable X and Flow. It also offers easy fiat onboarding and multi-party wallets (via Fireblocks).

Australian oufit Immutable has closed a $60 million Series B funding round.

It was co-led by Bitkraft Ventures and King River Capital.

Other companies participating included Prosus Ventures (previously Naspers), Galaxy Interactive, Fabric Ventures, Alameda Research, AirTree Ventures, Reinventure, Apex Capital, and Gary Vee’s VaynerFund.

Immutable will use the investment to scale its games Gods Unchained and Guild of Guardians, as well as build out the ecosystem around its Immutable X platform, which uses StarkWare’s technology to provide a seemless L2 solution for Ethereum.

UK-based Bitcoin payment platform Zebedee has raised $11.5 million.

The lead investor was Lakestar, with Initial Capital, New Form Capital and TVP participating.

Existing investors Collab+Currency, Cadenza Capital and Fulgur Ventures also invested, as did angels Hilmar Petursson, Chris Lee, Alexis Bonte, Timo Soininen and John Salter.

Zebedee using the Lightning Network to allow nanotransactions as low as 1 Satoshi.

Blockchain gaming community Yield Guild Gaming has raised $4.6 million finance round. This follows quickly from its $12.5 million YGG public token sale and a $4.5 million Series A.

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the round, with Kingsway Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Atelier Ventures, and gaming entrepreneur Gabriel Leydon also participating.

Thirdverse has raised $20 million in what it calls a combined Series A and B round.

The investment was led by its existing lead investor JAFCO with participation from previous investors Presence Capital, Sisu Ventures and Incubate Fund. Animoca Brands was the new investor for this round.

Based in Tokyo, Thirdverse is combining VR and blockchain. Its first game was Swords of Gargantua and it has two new games in development.

Planetarium has raised $2.6 million in what it calls a “growth round” to scale its idle PC game Nine Chronicles.

Animoca Brands and Divergence Ventures were the lead investors with IDEO CoLab, Sfermion, Hypersphere Ventures, SkyVision Capital and angels such as Axie Infinity co-founder Jeffrey Zirlin and Aave CEO Stani Kulechov also participating.

The investment will be used to scale the game, notably releasing a lite client for mobile and bridging the game’s NFTs and NCG cryptocurrency to Ethereum.

Horizon Blockchain Games has raised $4.5 million in what it describes as a “pre-Series A round SAFE” investment.

Funders included Bitkraft Ventures, previous investor CMT Digital, The Xchange Company, Khaled Verjee and Zyshan Kaba.

Horizon previously raised $5 million in its seed round in 2019 and 2020.

Best-known for its Ethereum-based TCG SkyWeaver, which remains in beta, Horizon is also now pushing its Sequence blockchain tools, which include a crypto wallet.

NFT marketplace OpenSea has raised $100 million in its Series B investment round.

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the round. Coatue, along with Michael Ovitz, Kevin Hartz, Dylan Field, Kevin Durant, Ashton Kutcher, and Tobie Lutke also participated.

OpenSea raised $23 million back in March 2021, also led by Andreessen Horowitz. It has profited from the continual rise of NFT projects such as Meebits and Bored Ape Yacht Club on the Ethereum blockchain. OpenSea hosted $160 million of trading during June 2021, taking a 2.5% cut of all transactions.

Animoca Brands has extended its recent funding with a further $50 million, taking that round to $138,888,888.

Investors included mobile games company Scopely, Razer’s zVentures, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, Coinbase Ventures and other Asian institutional funds.

Blockchain esports platform Community Gaming has raised a $2.3 million seed round.

The US company will use the funds to expand its business into Latin America and South East Asia.

Investors included CoinFund, Dapper Labs, Animoca Brands, Play Ventures and Hashed.

Other significant participants included Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures, Mark Pincus’ WorkPlay Ventures, WhaleShark and Forte’s Kevin Chou.

Mythical Games has closed a Series B funding round of $75 million.

The round was led by WestCap. Also participating were 01 Advisors and Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerFund, and existing investors.

This takes Mythical’s total funding to $150 million.

Mythical’s first game – Blankos Block Party – is now in early access and its marketplace is in closed alpha testing. As well as scaling Blankos to other platforms including console, the investment will enable Mythical to build out its blockchain game platform, and release additional products.

Based in Seattle, Mythical now has more than 100 staff and is hiring.

Blockchain gaming platform Forte has raised a $185 million Series A round.

Investors included Galaxy Interactive, Horizons Ventures, Iconiq Capital and Tencent.

Animoca Brands has raised $88,888,888 by issuing 93.4 million new shares. This values the company at $1 billion.

Investors included Kingsway Capital, RIT Capital Partners, HashKey Fintech Investment Fund, AppWorks Fund, LCV Fund, Huobi, Octava, Ellerston Capital, Perennial, Axia Infinity Ventures, SNZ, Liberty City Ventures, and Metapurse.

This takes Animoca Brands’ fundraising – via traditional VCs as well as token and NFT sales – to $106 million.

The new capital will be used to fund further acquisitions, develop new products, continue to make strategic investments, and secure additional IP licenses.

Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis has raised $7.5 million in its Series A round from investors including US billionaire Mark Cuban.

Other investors included Blocktower Capital, Konvoy Ventures, Libertus, Collab + Currency’s Derek Schloss and Stephen McKeon.

Previously Sky Mavis has raised over $5 million from a series of token and VC funding events.

The company, which is based in Vietnam, has around 20 staff and expands to at least double its headcount in the coming months.

It’s currently building out the infrastructure behind Axie Infinity, with the launch of its own Ronin sidechain, which allows its Ethereum-based NFTs and tokens to be used without the high transaction fees currently experienced on the Ethereum mainnet.

Polyient Ventures has invested $500,000 into Infinite Fleet publisher Exordium.

The deal was part of Exordium’s security token offering, which has raised over $3.7 million.

Polyient has been active in the blockchain game space with investments into Gala Games and Neon District developer Blockade Games.

Animoca Brands has raised $9.3 million from NFT sales in two games – The Sandbox and F1 Delta Time.

The Sandbox generated $5.9 million, paid via its SAND token by selling Land NFTs.

Some of these were sold directly at a fixed prices while others were sold at auction via OpenSea.

F1 Delta Time sold 300 NFTs which are parts of its officially licensed F1 racing tracks for $3.4 million, paid via its REVV token.

Both of these projects sold their NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, although they will also be available on other blockchains later in 2021.

Singapore-based outfit Enjin has announced its Efinity blockchain will now launch as a Polkadot parachain.

In conjunction, Enjin has announced a private sale of the EFI token, which raised $18.9 million.

The sale was led by Crypto.com Ventures, DFG Group and Hashed.

Other buyers included Blockchain.com Ventures, Arrington XRP Capital, Kenetic and an extensive list of other firms and individuals.

Dapper Labs has announced a $305 million funding round, which was led by Coatue.

Other investors include more than 30 NBA, NFL, and MLB athletes, entertainment leaders, and cultural influencers — and includes participation from The Chernin Group, Andreessen Horowitz, Venrock, USV, and Version One.

Dacoco, the developer of Alien Worlds, has raised $2 million in a private sale of the game’s Trilium (TLM) token.

The idle mining game, which runs on the Wax blockchain, is currently the second most popular blockchain game in terms of daily active unique wallets.

Investors included Animoca Brands, Longling Capital, 3Commas and Digital Assets Group.

NFT marketplace OpenSea has announced a $23 million funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Other participants included previous investors as well as angels such as Mark Cuban, Naval Ravikant, Tim Ferris and Alexis Ohanian. You can read the full list here.

Australian startup Illuvium has raised $5 million from Framework Ventures for its Unreal Engine game also called Illuvium.

Co-founded by Kieran and Aaron Warwick (the younger brothers of Synthetix founder Kane), the game has a strong DeFi component revolving around NFTs and passive income, and uses the Immutable X scaling solution.

The game is planned for release at the end of Q3 2021.

Fantasy soccer game Sorare has closed a $50 million Series A round, which was led by Benchmark Capital (Riot Games, Discord, Twitter).

Prominent players including Antoine Griezmann, Rio Ferdinand and Oliver Bierhoff also invested as did Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian.

It has previously raised $8 million.

NFT lending platform NFTfi has raised $890,000 from a range of investors including Animoca Brands, which takes the role of strategic investor, CoinFund and angels such as Dapper Labs’ Roham Gharegozlou and The Sandbox’s Sebastien Borget.

Virtual world outfit IMVU has raised $35 million from Structural Capital and NetEase to rebrand as Together Labs.

It will also launch new mobile-focused project WithMe.

As with IMVU, the company’s new VCOIN cryptocurrency will be a key component of economic growth for users.

South Korean outfit Planetarium has raised $2 million from Naver and other local VCs for its blockchain game platform, including PC RPG Nine Chronicles, which is currently in beta.

Swedish developer Antler Interactive has raised $2.1 million from a range of investors to complete and launch its forthcoming PC game My Neighbor Alice.

Polyient paid Gala Games $800,000 to acquire the Citadel of the Sun NFT from its forthcoming MMO Mirandus.

The Citadel of the Sun is a one-off legendary-tier NFT that will enable players to deposit and store in-game items.

Polyient previously invested in Blockade Games.

Paris-based Sorare has added $4.3 million to its seed round led by the Cassius Family fund. This take Sorare’s seed round to $9 million.

Barcelona player Gerard Pique, who also invested in the seed extension, will also join Sorare as a strategic advisor.

The Sandbox completed its 4.3 Land presale (including premium Smurfs content), raising around $450,000 in the process.

Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis raised $860,000 in a strategic token sale of its AXS governance token to existing investor and advisor Delphi Digital.

Delphi had previously acquired five Axie NFTs from the game’s marketplace for over $160,000.

Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis sold $3 million of its AXS token through Binance Launchpad.

Dapper Labs raised $18 million via a sale and an auction of Flow tokens on the Coinlist platform. The sale priced the Flow tokens at the $0.1 value of previous private sales, while the auction priced the tokens at $0.38.

This takes Dapper Labs total funding raised to $68 million.

Japanese startup Thirdverse (previously Yomuneco) has raised $8.5 million in its Series A to make VR games also using blockchain technology.

Prior to the open beta of the NBA Top Shot game on its Flow blockchain, Dapper Labs has raised $11.4 million. This takes its total raised to $50 million.

All previous investors participated, while new investors were Coinbase Ventures, Distributed Global, Valor Capital Group, A.Capital, BlockTower Capital, Blockchange Ventures, EONXI Ventures, Reed Company, Greenfield One, North Island Ventures, Republic Labs, L1 Digital AG and Pirata Capital.

A number of NBA players also invested: Andre Iguodala (Miami Heat), Spencer Dinwiddie and Garrett Temple (Brooklyn Nets), JaVale McGee (Los Angeles Lakers), and Aaron Gordon (Orlando Magic).

The Sandbox developer Pixowl (part of Animoca Brands) has announced a $3 million hard capped public sale of its SAND ERC20 token through Binance Launchpad.

Fantasy soccer game Sorare raises a $4 million seed round, lead by e.ventures. It plans to double both team-size and the number of clubs under license.

Animoca Brands raises $4.1 million, from strategic investors including M7 Asia and Mind Fund. It’s now raised a total of $18 million.

DMarket raises $6.5 million, from Almaz Capital and Xsolla, adds Trip Hawkins to board. It’s now raised a total of $26 million.

Ember Sword dev Bright Star raises $700,000, from Play Ventures and Galaxy Interactive

Horizon Blockchain Games raises $5 million, from Initialized Capital and others. It’s now raised a total of $9 million.

CryptoDozer dev SuperTree raises $2.5 million