Sky Mavis, the developer of the famous NFT-based game Axie Infinity, has raised US $152 million in a Series B funding round headed by Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital company located in the United States (a16z).
This round was also joined by Accel Partners and Paradigm.
The money will go toward building a worldwide workforce, scaling infrastructure, and developing a distribution platform to help game creators create blockchain-enabled games.
The fresh capital comes after a US$7.5 million Series A round in May. The round, which was led by Libertus Capital, included investors such as Collab + Currency, Blocktower Capital, Mark Cuban, and Alexis Ohanian.
Aleksander Leonard Larsen, Nguyn Thành Trung, oàn Minh T, H S Vit Anh, and Jeffrey Samuel Kim Zirlin established Axie Infinity in early 2018.
People may play, live, work, and earn in virtual worlds because to Sky Mavis’s invention of the play-to-earn (P2E) idea. Axie Infinity, its first P2E game, allows users to breed, combat, and trade digital creatures known as Axie.
Players control the in-game assets they buy and may earn real-world incentives for their in-game activity in NFT-based P2E games.
Axie Infinity claims to have aided in the creation of income-generating possibilities for underprivileged individuals all around the world; 25% of participants are unbanked, and 50% have never used cryptocurrency before.
Players have flocked to Axie Infinity from all over the world, with more than 1.8 million daily active gamers coming into the site in August. It claims to have made daily transactions of US $33 million, for a total volume of more than US $2 billion.
The Mavis Hub will link to Sky Mavis’s own Ronin Blockchain and will distribute games on both PCs and Macs. The Mavis Hub will assist game creators in creating and distributing blockchain-enabled games in addition to supporting Axie Infinity.
Arianna Simpson, the general partner at a16z, said. “The Axie team has unlocked a new way to build and play games that are already completely redefining this category. The game’s growth is a remarkable testament to how deeply this model resonates with people around the world. The Axie team has triggered an earthquake in gaming, and the industry is now forever changed.”
“We are on a mission to create economic freedom for gamers. We are making this happen by turning players into owners of in-game assets unlike the traditional model where publishers, distribution platforms and game developers retain control and benefit the most,” noted Trung Nguyen, Sky Mavis CEO.
Sky Mavis previously received US$1.5 million in funding from Animoca Brands, Hashed, Pangea Blockchain Fund, Consensys, and 500 Startups Vietnam.
