Tag: A16Z

Andreessen Horowitz Floats $600M Gaming Fund

by Blockchain News

After more than a decade of actively investing in the gaming industry, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) wants to further exert its influence in that space.

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In order to do this, the investment giant has floated a $600 million fund which it believes will help position it aright to tap enough market share in the more than $300 billion industry.

The company said it floated the fund which it named Games Fund One with the backing of key players in the gaming industry including David Baszucki, founder of Roblox; Jason Citron, founder of Discord; Marc Merrill, co-founder of Riot Games; Mike Morhaime, co-founder of Blizzard; Aleks Larsen and Jeffrey Zirlin, co-founders of Sky Mavis; Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch, Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga; and Riccardo Zacconi, founder of King.

The enormous funds will be used to support startups building a wide range of solutions in the space. These solutions border on infrastructure, supporting ecosystems for developers, and outfits developing games directly.

“GAMES FUND ONE is founded on the belief that games will play a pivotal role in defining how we socialize, play, and work over the next century. Over the past decade, games have undergone a radical transformation, from simply being packaged entertainment to becoming online services that more closely resemble social networks and scale-like consumer technology companies,” the firm said in a blog post written by the trio of Andrew Chen, Jonathan Lai, and James Gwertzman, General Managers at a16z who will be in charge of the fund.

As it has gone all out with gaming, Andreessen Horowitz is also bullish on the role blockchain technology and Web3.0 has to play in the long-term future of the gaming industry. 

The firm detailed in a report earlier how Web3.0, powered by blockchain is a better offshoot for creators when compared to traditional solutions, and as such, the investment from Games Fund One will be extended to the emerging ecosystem to complement earlier investments in CryptoKitties and Axie Infinity and other notable startups in the space.

Andreessen has also been an active proponent of the blockchain gaming space. The company’s general partner Arianna Simpson has led investments in several high-profile pay-to-earn and crypto-related gaming companies like Axie Infinity maker Sky Mavis.

According to Protocol, the fund will also collaborate with Andreessen’s crypto fund to co-invest in blockchain gaming deals.

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Irreverent Labs Raises $40m in Funding, Led by a16z

by Blockchain News

Seattle-based startup Irreverent Labs has once again raised $40 million in funding led by Silicon Valley heavyweight investment firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

Irreverent Labs is building games and entertainment in which all the characters are AI-powered NPCs.

The financing will lead to the development of a blockchain-based fighting game called MechaFightClub, which pits chicken-style fighting games against each other.

The platform will integrate emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and NFTs to run on the Solana blockchain, allowing players to trade fighter jets called “mechanical robots” and play “cruelty-free” fighting games at any time.

The game is Play-to-earn (P2E) mode or GameFi. P2E is a popular business model that exists in the blockchain gaming world that integrates Web3 and blockchain, which corresponds to the F2P (Free to Play) model commonly seen in the real world of the gaming industry.

Players can use their blockchain currency, gold nuggets, to make in-game purchases or withdraw them for use on the wider Solana blockchain.

Investors including Solana Ventures, the venture capital arm of Solana Labs; Michael Ovitz, founder of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), participated in this round of financing. Rahul Sood, co-founder of Irreverent Labs said that:

“Gamers will soon realize that having ownership of the characters within the game and building a relationship with that character over time is actually a really good thing,”

Irreverent Labs has raised a total of $5M in funding over 1 round. The seed round was raised on Oct 29, 2021. a16z also contributed to emerging blockchain startup Irreverent Labs which raised a record $25.2 billion last year, up 713% year-over-year.

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a16Z to Establishe Crypto Research Lab

by Blockchain News

Wallet Street Venture Capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz (a16Z), announced establishing its own crypto research lab to conduct blockchain-related academic research.

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Led by Tim Roughgarden, adjunct professor of computer science at both Stanford and Columbia, and Dan Boneh, professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford, the lab will combine academic theory and practice to address the environmental problems currently caused by the crypto industry as a whole Discuss and experiment with corresponding solutions.

Andreessen Horowitz said that:

“The crypto and Web3 sector has emerged as a new frontier in technology, and it has matured into an independent field of knowledge that brings together elements of computer science, economics, finance, and the humanities.”

a16Z has rallied investors for a $4.5 billion dual fund targeted at making strategic investments in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

While the a16Z’s plans have not been made public yet, the company is well known for a related fundraiser in the ecosystem. The company pulled $2.2 billion from investors back in June last year to create the Crypto Fund III, the largest at the time.

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Former a16z Partner Katie Haun’s Crypto VC Fund Raises $1.5 Billion

by Blockchain News

Former federal prosecutor Katie Haun’s crypto venture capital fund has raised $1.5 billion to invest in crypto-related startups.

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Haun, Andreessen Horowitz’s first female general partner, announced Tuesday to complete a $500 million early-stage fund and another $1 billion for more established startups focused on web3 after leaving a16z in December,

Still, Haun said in an interview that：

“it’s not a bad time to deploy a crypto fund” despite those challenges. The extreme volatility is reminiscent of the first two crypto funds I deployed. What I learned from those funds is that great founders and great projects are going to be built in every cycle.”

Haun said her funds will be deployed for at least two years “and invest in digital tokens and equity in areas ranging from decentralized financial applications to NFTs and so-called decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).”

“I did not fit the mold of the traditional venture investor,” she said in the interview. “I think we need more people who don’t fit the mold. I think web3 really needs those voices.”

Haun Ventures is currently a team of nine, with a roster that includes Sam Rosenblum, who was a general partner at Polychain Capital, and Chris Lehane, who was previously on the executive management team at Airbnb.

In addition, plans to expand the team size.

Lehane, chief strategy officer at Haun Ventures, said he would focus on partnering with different promising cryptocurrency startups, crafting relevant battles to make their products more mainstream, and addressing regulatory issues early.

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Former a16z Founder Katie Haun’s Crypto VC Fund Raises $1.5 Billion

by Blockchain News

Former federal prosecutor Katie Haun’s crypto venture capital fund has raised $1.5 billion to invest in crypto-related startups.

Haun, Andreessen Horowitz’s first female general partner, announced Tuesday to complete a $500 million early-stage fund and another $1 billion for more established startups focused on web3 after leaving a16z in December,

Still, Haun said in an interview that：

“it’s not a bad time to deploy a crypto fund” despite those challenges. The extreme volatility is reminiscent of the first two crypto funds I deployed. What I learned from those funds is that great founders and great projects are going to be built in every cycle.”

Haun said her funds will be deployed for at least two years “and invest in digital tokens and equity in areas ranging from decentralized financial applications to NFTs and so-called decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).”

“I did not fit the mold of the traditional venture investor,” she said in the interview. “I think we need more people who don’t fit the mold. I think web3 really needs those voices.”

Haun Ventures is currently a team of nine, with a roster that includes Sam Rosenblum, who was a general partner at Polychain Capital, and Chris Lehane, who was previously on the executive management team at Airbnb.

In addition, plans to expand the team size.

Lehane, chief strategy officer at Haun Ventures, said he would focus on partnering with different promising cryptocurrency startups, crafting relevant battles to make their products more mainstream, and addressing regulatory issues early.

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Meta Alumni Owned Layer-1 Protocol Aptos Raises $200m from a16z

by Blockchain News

Former Meta Platforms Inc staff, led by Mo Shaikh, have raised $200 million in a strategic funding round for its new startup Aptos, a layer-1 blockchain protocol looks to continue the innovative work that was being done of the Libra/Diem project. 

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The funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with participation from Tiger Global, Katie Haun, Multicoin Capital, 3 Arrows Capital, FTX Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures, among others. It is worthy of note to mention that Aptos is also backed by Silvergate Capital, the leading bank for innovative businesses in fintech and cryptocurrency known to acquire the Diem project from the Libra Association earlier this year.

While the Aptos team is notably building the protocol based on the Open Source provisions of the Diem blockchain, none of the Diem IP addresses now being controlled by Silvergate Bank will be used as promised. 

“We are the original creators, researchers, designers, and builders of Diem, the blockchain that was first built to serve this purpose. While the world never got to see what we built, our work is far from over,” Aptos CEO Mo Shaikh wrote in a blog post last month.

The funding news was accompanied by the launch of the blockchain’s Devnet, which will allow developers to test out the capabilities of the new protocol. While its work has not yet gone mainstream, the Aptos core developers said companies like “Anchorage, Binance, Coinbase, Livepeer, Moonclave, Paxos, Paymagic, Rarible, and Streaming Fast, are already engaging with the startup, providing feedback and contributing codes on devnet,” according to the TechCrunch report. 

Billed to compete with the likes of Ethereum and Solana for most of the innovative products it is heralding, the core goal that investors use to identify with Aptos is likely hinged on its plans to build a protocol that will model the scalability and widespread nature of the rebranded Facebook-backed Diem payments network.

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Reports Bored Ape creator in talks with A16z: Potential valuation $5B

by Cointelegraph

Silicon Valley tech VC Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) is reportedly eying an investment in Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs, with a reported valuation as high as $5 billion.

Sources for the Financial Times revealed that Yuga Labs is seeking funding for a multi-million dollar piece of the company. If a deal is secured, it would mark the first institutional investment Yuga Labs has accepted as its popular nonfungible token (NFT) collection has become one of the biggest in the industry.

The terms of the deal have not yet been set and negotiations may be canceled outright. Neither A16z nor Yuga Labs have confirmed the talks p

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is currently the second-most traded collection on the largest NFT marketplace OpenSea, with 380,821 ETH ($1 billion) in total traded volume. At its February launch, it cost users just $300 to mint an Ape. The collection now boasts a floor price of 99 ETH ($263,839) at the time of writing. Major celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Paris Hilton have publicly revealed they own Apes.

Yuga Labs entered 2022 with only 11 full-time employees on staff. However, the company stated that it has always had the ambition to be a “community-owned brand” in a Jan. 4 tweet.

It should come as little surprise that A16z is involved in investment discussions with Yuga Labs. The investment firm’s crypto portfolio includes 41 companies including NFT-based projects OpenSea, Autograph, and Cryptokitties. Both of the core teams for those projects, however, are publicly known, unlike the pseudonymous team that leads Yuga Labs.

A16z wants to expand its exposure to crypto by hunting for $4.5 billion in funds, which would solidify its position as one of the major crypto investment firms.

Institutional interest in Yuga Labs demonstrates that the NFT space as a whole may be set to enter a new phase in its maturity. In 12 months, trading volume on NFTs has grown from just $20,000 per day on Jan. 26 2021 to over $5 billion on OpenSea.

Related: NFTs are ‘Stayin’ Alive’ as new minting trends, AI and music-based projects thrive

Furthermore, new NFT platforms on various blockchains designed for niche content have been popping up since last year. NFL superstar Tom Brady entered the NFT space last year by co-founding the Autograph NFT marketplace for artists and athletes, in which A16z participated in a $170 million funding round last month.