Gaming startup Sky Mavis, the company behind the crypto game Axie Infinity, is raising $150 million in a Series B funding round to scale the gaming platform. According to The Information, the company is close to a $3 billion valuation in the new funding round that will be led by Andreessen Horowitz.
This is no new territory for Andreessen who recently raised a new venture fund for gaming startups. Earlier, it established the largest funding venture for blockchain-based startups with a $2.2 billion crypto fund in June.
The investment will be used to scale Axie Infinity, the blockchain-based game that jump-started NFT gaming. The game introduced numerous users to the possibilities of ‘play-to-earn’ games and the opportunities in it. The funding round comes at a time when the game’s native AXS token is at an all-time high after a stellar growth of up to 5000%.
Since Axie Infinity launched in 2018, it has grown to become the largest NFT gaming ecosystem. With more than 41,000 daily active users, and up to $15 million in monthly NFT volume, the game has a fully diluted market cap of over $2 billion. This year alone, the game is close to grossing $1 billion in revenue from in-game transactions alone.
In a previous funding round led by UK-based investor Libertus Capital in May, the firm raised $7.5 million for the game. The seed funding round for the game in 2019 was also led by Animoca Brands who raised $1.5 million.
According to Sky Mavis, “Axie’s success will act as a magnet to attract more builders to NFT gaming. We’ll help these pioneers launch and scale their projects both technically using Ronin and by introducing our peerless community to their products.”
The game is a major source of income in countries like Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Venezuela, and Vietnam. It is estimated that as much as 50% of the game’s players are from Southeast Asia. In the Philippines for example, it is popular enough that the government has announced it will begin taxing Axie Infinity players.
In response, Sky Mavis stated that the company was willing to “work with governments on a path forward that encourages innovation and empowers gamers.”
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