$3B flows to Metaverse and Web3 gaming this month as A16z’s tips in $600M

Sebastian Parker
Sebastian Parker
Last Updated on May 19, 2022

Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm, has launched a $600,000,000 fund for gaming startups. It focuses on Web3 and says it believes that “games infrastructures and technologies will be the key building blocks of The Metaverse.”

The fund, also known as “GAMES FUND One”, will invest in three areas: game studios and consumer applications that support player communities, such as Discord, and gaming infrastructure providers.

According to the a16z team, “the coming Metaverse” will be built by gaming companies using games technologies. It also believes that games will become “the dominant way people spend their time.”

A16z’s move marks almost $3 billion in venture capital and gaming industry giants to Web3 gaming and Metaverse projects since mid April. White Star Capital , a venture firm, raised $120 Million to fund its decentralized finance ( DeFi) as well as a gaming-focused fund. Framework Ventures also allocated a $200,000,000 allocation to blockchain gaming projects in April 2022.

Gaming industry giants are also funding massive amounts of money for metaverse projects. Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, raised $2 billion last month to establish a metaverse , with funding from Sony, LEGO, and LEGO.

The team from a16z highlighted the billions in revenue that games like Minecraft make, using Minecraft as an example of a title which has maintained an active community that functions more like a social networking site. Minecraft is currently the most popular game, with 173 million monthly users over the last 30 days according to game statistics platform ActivePlayer. This despite the fact that it was released nearly 11 years ago.

Related: The Metaverse is still possible in 2022. However, the virtual space is not perfect.

Although this is the first fund by a16z that is exclusively dedicated to games, the firm has previously backed many successful games-related projects such as Oculus VR company and Zynga game developer Zynga. The investments “confirmed our belief” that games need a special focus.

The fund was founded by founders of game development companies as well as popular games, such as Aleks Larsen, Jeffrey Zirlin, and Kevin Lin, who cofounded Sky Mavis, which owns the highly-rated Axie Infinity Blockchain game.