Axie Infinity Bags $152M In Series B Funding

Sky Mavis, creator of the blockchain-enabled play-to-earn video game, Axie Infinity today announced that it has raised $152 Million from a new funding round led by popular American venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

The announcement came just a day after several reports that the technology company will be raising approximately $150 million in a Series B funding round at a valuation near $3 billion.

The Series B funding round was also supported by other crypto investors including global exchange giant FTX, Accel, Paradigm, Standard Crypto, as well as Fabric Ventures, and Samsung Next.

As per the announcement, the Axie Infinity creator noted that the fresh capital will be used to “fuel the play-to-earn revolution.”

“This new funding round will allow us to fuel the play-to-earn revolution, bring in incredible talent from across the globe, scale our infrastructure for expected growth, and build our own distribution platforms to support game developers to create NFT-enabled games,” Sky Mavis said.

Axie Infinity is a blockchain-enabled online video game that rewards players with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for breeding furry creatures called Axies.

The platform developed in 2018 has now gained mainstream success and has become the largest NFT project of all time.

Sky Mavis revealed that it is also planning a major upgrade to its gaming platform and the release of its Ronin-based decentralized exchange.

The technology company noted that Axie Infinity is the first game created to be possessed by its community of players and that it has expanded from 38,000 daily active players in April 2021 to over 2 million daily active users currently, with $2.2 Billion in volume traded on its proprietary NFT marketplace.

“The game’s growth is a phenomenal testament to how deeply this model is resonating with people around the world… The Axie team has triggered an earthquake in gaming and the industry is now forever changed,” Arianna Simpson, general partner at a16z said.

a16z is a long-term admirer of the gaming community. In August, the American venture capital firm invested in  Yield Guild Games (YGG), a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) focused on investing in NFT-based games while leading its funding round that raised over $4.6 million.

The YGG team became the first Filipino founders to receive a16z’s sincere backing.

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