Horizon Blockchain Games raises $40 million from Ubisoft, Take-Two and other investors

As NFT games boom, the traditional video game industry is taking an interest in Web3 development, investing large sums of money in blockchain game companies.

On October 4, Horizon Blockchain Games, a startup focused on Web3 game development, announced the raising of $40 million in a Series A funding round, involving major traditional video game companies such as Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive.

According to Horizon’s press release, the funding round was led by Brevan Howard Digital and Morgan Creek Digital. It featured investors from the Web3 industry and the technology space in general, including Polygon, Xsolla, BITKRAFT, Initialized Capital, Quantstamp, Everyrealm, Sky9 Capital, Round13 Capital, Xchange, Translink, CMT Digital and J17, among others; However, the most notable for the gaming community were Ubisoft and Take-Two.

Ubisoft has developed some legendary titles in the gaming industry, such as Assassin’s Creed, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell and Far Cry, among many others. It has also invested in the blockchain space, even launching in-game NFTs and contributing to the security of the Tezos blockchain.

At the same time, Take-Two owns 2K Games and Rockstar, which has several very popular titles such as Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K, BioShock, Max Payne and The Elder Scrolls, to name a few.

In addition, the financing round contained individual investments from key figures such as Aleks Larsen, co-founder of Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity, Tobias Lütke, CEO of Shopify, Satish Kanwar, vice president of product acceleration at Shopify, Sebastien Borget, co-founder of The Sandbox, among others.

A Web3 that is easy and fun to use

According to Horizon, the proceeds will be used to grow the company’s ecosystem by hiring more employees to develop better products. The concept of a blockchain may seem complex to many, but Horizon’s focus is on building user-friendly Web3 products.

“Our Series A allows us to expand the Sequence ecosystem by attracting more builders to the platform and enabling the next generation of video games and applications.”

In addition, they will use some of the money to improve the content of Skyweaver, the company’s flagship game (which Horizon says has been called “the best blockchain game”), and launch Niftyswap, a decentralized marketplace for semi-fungible tokens (SFTs). ), which will enable the exchange of Web3-based in-game items and metaverse collectibles.

Horizon is betting on long-term Web3 development

Peter Kieltyka, CEO and co-founder of Horizon, said the company has always had a long-term vision, so it has worked carefully to build “complementary products” such as Sequence, Skyweaver and Niftyswap, with which it can innovate and further expand its own ecosystem.

“With Sequence, we enable developers to create next-generation internet experiences; with Skyweaver we deliver a fun, strategic and rich content for players to enjoy; and with Niftyswap, we enable the seamless exchange of SFTs, which are poised to become some of the world’s most useful and traded virtual commodities.”

Sandeep Nailwal, the co-founder of Polygon, noted that Polygon was pleased to join Horizon’s funding round to deepen its ties with the company while driving the adoption of the crypto ecosystem.

“We’re bringing some of the world’s biggest companies to Polygon, and it’s amazing to have the Sequence platform for developers to make their journey into web3 seamless.”

Horizon did not disclose the amount of their new valuation, which could have increased exponentially, considering their last funding round was completed in July 2021 for $4.5 million. – Almost 10% of what they collected in this last one.