Gaming investments surged 94% in Q124 amid market recoveries.
Venture capital is seeing a strong return in the gaming industry, both in terms of funding and deal volume.
According to Convoy Ventures, a venture capital firm specializing in the video game industry, the first quarter of 2024 saw $594 million in game VC funding, a 94% increase from the previous quarter. Deal volume was up 28 percent, with 124 deals completed.
Convoy expects the gaming market to grow from $189 billion to $225 billion by 2023.
The web3 industry is also being driven by blockchain games. According to Dapradar, Web3 games will account for 30 percent of all DApp activity in the first quarter of 2024, attracting 2.1 million active wallets each day. During the quarter, Polygon collected more than 1.1 million new wallets, a 429 percent increase from the previous quarter.
Venture capital firms are gearing up to keep up with the bull cycle. In April, some of the VCs for fundraising included Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm and Pantera Capital.
Cointelegraph's VC Roundup highlights some of the startups that raised capital in April.
Laser Digital will lead a $5 million investment in Tevara.
Tevara has completed a $5 million round of funding led by Nomura Laser Digital. The funding will support the development of a gaming ecosystem using zkSync's ZK Stack. Investors backing the startup also include Hashkey Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Matter Labs, Draper Dragon, Faculty Group, Crypto.com Capital, Cogitent Ventures, Selini Capital, DWF Labs, Morningstar Ventures and more. The company has been working on the zkSync platform for two years, focusing on a game-IP-first strategy to solve problems in the Web3 game infrastructure. According to the statement, Tevara has expanded its community to include more than 850,000 Solbon gamers from over 100 countries over the past year.
AVALON raised $10M for its first title
Independent game studio AVALON has received $10 million in funding from BITKRAFT Ventures and HASHED. Additional participants include Coinbase Ventures, Spartan Capital, Foresight Ventures, LiquidX and Momentum6. The investment will fund the development of their launch game, also named Avalon, a multiplayer game that allows players to traverse different worlds while maintaining their assets and progress. In the year Founded in 2021, AVALON's leadership team includes former members of Microsoft, Sony, Capcom, Infinity Ward, and Ubisoft, who have contributed to franchises such as Call of Duty, EverQuest, and Assassin's Creed. AVALON is currently in development for PC and cloud streaming.
Unexpectedly, he scored 1.7 million dollars in the seed round
Uncharted gets $1.7 million in seed funding to develop ‘gamification layer of crypto' The funding round was led by Shima Capital, with participation from The Spartan Group, Double Peak Group, Devmons, 32-bit, D64 Ventures, Trinity Labs, LiquidX and a number of individual investors, including Immortal brothers Robbie and James Ferguson. It seeks to create a GameFi ecosystem where anonymous financial incentives are integrated into gameplay. The company's first game, “Gangster Arena,” reportedly generated 150 ETH in-game transactions in its first season. According to the statement, there are plans to release “Gangster Arena 2” and other projects. Funds raised will be used for the development of Uncharted's games and supporting ecosystem.
Contango Raises $5M in Blockchain, AI Seed Fund
Venture capital firm Contango Digital Assets has announced the first close of its Contango Blockchain x AI Fund, raising $5 million in capital. The fund aims to invest up to $10 million in North American seed round companies at the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence. Investors in the new fund include XVentures, Quantstamp's Richard Ma and former backers of VANTA DAO, Digital Currency Group and Polychain Capital. Founded in 2020, Contango is a Canadian company focused on promoting global decentralized systems, especially decentralized artificial intelligence. “By decentralizing governance and overlapping with the initial blockchain incentives in open source development, we are witnessing the creation of the first global Artificial General Intelligence. “Our goal is to make sure we're supporting projects that are being built in this direction and that we're giving fair weight to centralized and monopolistic alternatives,” said managing partner Mike Granis.
Binance Labs will be an investor in Activity Labs.
Binance Labs has made an undisclosed investment in Activity Labs, a blockchain development company. The startup recently closed a $38 million Series A funding round. Move Labs is building an ecosystem of modular Move-based blockchains. According to the statement, the funds will be used to expand open source tools, frameworks and protocols to promote the adoption of the Move programming language in blockchains. Move Labs was founded in 2022 by Rushi Manche and Cooper Scanlon, early developers in the Move ecosystem. Mobility Labs is also focusing on expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.
