A16z debuts US$ 600 million fund focused on Metaverse games

Venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz (aka a16z) announced it had launched its Games Fund One with plans to deploy US$ 600 million across the gaming industry. 

Games will continue to play a ‘pivotal role in defining how people socialize, play and work’ and drive innovation into the future. The fund will be allocated to building gaming studios, games and customer experience, according to a16z’s announcement blogpost. 

‘Over the past decade, games have undergone a radical transformation, from simply being packaged entertainment to becoming online services that more closely resemble social networks and scale like consumer technology companies.’ 

Reflecting on the success enjoyed by gaming giants - Fortnite, League of Legends and Minecraft, who are generating massive communities and following, a16z believes the Metaverse powered by game platforms and technologies can potentially challenge the $300 billion game industry.

‘With [Games Fund One], we will continue to add more functions and develop deeper networks that are tailored to the games ecosystem so we can help our portfolio companies with everything from building digital communities to managing their virtual economies, to IP licensing best practices, to helping build their development teams,’ the blogpost continued. It said the fund was nearly a decade in the making and born out of the belief that investments in gaming requires.’

Joining the Games Fund One include executives in the gaming industry such as founder of Roblox David Baszucki; founder of Discord Jason Citron; co-founder of Riot Games Marc Merrill; co-founder of Twitch Kevin Lin, co-founders of Sky Mavis Jeffrey Zirlin and Aleks Larsen, founder of King Riccardo Zacconi and more. 

Andreessen Horowitz continues to bet big on crypto technologies and Web3 amid the crypto bear market. 

Since January 2021, nearly half of a16z's gaming investments (around US$ 4.5 billion) have been allocated to Blockchain and crypto startups including Forte, Dapper Labs and Axie Infinity. 

In April 2022, the VC firm created a Web3 focused crypto research unit to fix emerging issues in the Web3 ecosystem and claimed Web3 applications have ‘unlocked an extremely rich design space for innovation’. Moreover, they are capable of uncovering ‘fresh research challenges that are fundamental to how this technological movement will play out.’

Prior to the bear market, the VC firm had invested early in gaming platforms including Zynga and Oculus and Meta. It also led Roblox’s US$ 150 million Series G round in 2020. 

Photo: Getty