Horizon Blockchain Games has secured $40 million USD in Series A capital from a group of investors that span Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, traditional gaming companies, and players in the Web3 space.
Horizon was founded in 2017 by a Toronto-based team. The startup is best known for its Web3 game Skyweaver.
The Series A round was led by Brevan Howard Digital, the crypto and digital asset division of investment management group Brevan Howard, and Morgan Creek Digital, another United States-based fund focused on digital asset management.
The round also saw participation from a number of investors including traditional video gaming firms Ubisoft Entertainment and Take-Two Interactive Software, Polygon, Xsolla, Round13 Capital, Initialized Capital, Bitkraft Ventures, CMT Digital, Quantstamp, Xchange, and Everyrealm. Angel investors also took part, including Lütke, The Sandbox’s co-founder Sebastien Borget, Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity co-founder Aleks Larsen, Lolli’s co-founder Alex Adelman, and Ethereum educator and The Daily Gwei’s founder Anthony Sassano.
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Prior to this Series A round, Crunchbase data shows that Horizon had raised $13.3 million in seed financing. Past Canadian investors in Horizon include Golden Ventures.
The startup plans to use the capital to grow Sequence, its all-in-one developer platform and smart wallet for building Web3 games and applications. It also plans to expand Skyweaver’s content and reach, and launch a Niftyswap-powered semi-fungible token (SFT) marketplace.
The breadth of investors in Horizon’s round points to increasing interest in the NFT gaming space. One report estimates the global play-to-earn NFT games market was worth approximately $776.9 million USD in 2021 and is expected to reach $2.8 billion USD by 2028.
Speaking with BetaKit earlier this year, Horizon co-founder and chief storyteller Michael Sanders differentiated the company’s Web3 games from others. “It took us over four years to get Skyweaver into an open beta state where we were playtesting rigorously and ensuring that it’s a quality experience, independent of any economic or blockchain factors,” said Sanders, adding that “most Web3 games that we’ve seen thus far are—they’re crap, like they’re bad experiences. They are financial tools masquerading as a game.”
Feature image courtesy Horizon.