Horizon Blockchain Games secures $40 million in Series A round

Quick take:

• Ubisoft Entertainment SA and Take-Two Interactive Software also participated in the round.
• The company said the valuation was higher than in its previous funding round last year.
• Horizon was valued at $89.5 million after last year’s funding.

Horizon Blockchain Games today announced the closing of a $40 million Series A round led by Brevan Howard Digital and Morgan Creek Digital.

Participants in the round included Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., Polygon, Ubisoft, Xsolla, Initialized Capital, BITKRAFT Ventures, CMT Digital, Quantstamp, Round13 Capital, Xchange and Everyrealm.

The round also includes key angel investors such as Shopify’s CEO Tobias Lütke, The Sandbox’s co-founder Sebastien Borget, Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity’s co-founder Aleks Larsen, Lolli’s co-founder Alex Adelman, and leading Ethereum educator and The Daily Gwei’s founder Anthony Sassano.

The new grant of funds will be used to expand Skyweaver’s content and reach; and introduce Niftyswap, a semi-fungible token (SFT) marketplace.

“At Horizon, we have a long-term vision for the future of web3, carefully building complementary products to support the ecosystem,” said Peter Kieltyka, co-founder and CEO of Horizon. “Our Series A allows us to expand the Sequence ecosystem by attracting more builders to our platform via marketing, community and partnership initiatives. We also have big plans to expand the content and community features of our game Skyweaver and launch Niftyswap, a decentralized marketplace that makes exchanging SFTs easy and secure.”

Sequence aims to become the go-to platform for any company or project building a consumer-facing Web3 product. The Web3 developer platform offers tools including a smart contract wallet, onramps, token and NFT APIs, a custom marketplace builder called the Niftyswap Protocol, and more.

Nearly 40 projects integrate Sequence tools, with twelve already using the platform, including Skyweaver, Cool Cats, Niftyswap, Sunflower Land, Dark Earth, BoomLand, Mechachain and others. Sequence Wallet, already with over 675,000 users, is also integrated into the new boxing NFT marketplace on Polygon from DAZN, the global sports entertainment platform.

“What sets Horizon apart from so many other companies is their deep technical prowess with Sequence, and how the developer platform has been informed by building their own applications: Skyweaver, which is a uniquely great game, and Niftyswap,” said Xavier Segura, General Partner at Morgan Creek Digital. “They understand what has been fumbled in blockchain and have designed a powerful platform that will introduce both developers and users to web3.”

Horizon will also use the capital to expand and improve the world of its blockchain TCG Skyweaver, which was released as an open beta on February 8. In addition, Horizon will expand into a new business pillar with Niftyswap.io, a decentralized marketplace for Web3 collectibles, and provide front-end access to this marketplace, allowing users to instantly buy and sell tradables, while liquidity providers earn fees.

Niftyswap aims to be the premier destination for trading SFTs, Web3 and metaverse merchandise, including video game items, digital fashion, metaverse collectibles and more. The marketplace has been released to a group of external testers from the Web3 community in preparation for a public release this fall.

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