Andreessen Horowitz launches a new vertical fund focused exclusively on opportunities in the gaming industry.
The new $600 million fund brings together a pool of dedicated capital and a new internal structure dedicated to sourcing deals within the gaming industry. The new vehicle, called Games Fund One, joins other industry-specific arms at a16z, including the crypto and bio divisions.
The fund is led by general partners Andrew Chen, Jon Lai and James Gwertzman.
“Of [Games Fund One]we will continue to add more features and develop deeper networks aligned with the game ecosystem so we can help our portfolio companies with everything from building digital communities to managing their virtual economies, to best practices for IP licensing, to help build their development teams,” a blog post reads the announcement of the creation of the fund.
The fund’s backers include a number of gaming executives, including co-founders of companies such as King, Discord, Roblox, Zynga, Twitch, Blizzard and Riot Games.
Andreessen Horowitz has already placed a number of bets in the world of gaming and MMOs, including Zynga and Oculus. The vertical games formation comes as one of the other bets, Facebook (now Meta), gets loud about the odds in gaming when it comes to the metaverse.
The new fund comes at a time of pullback for the broader tech industry as investors encourage startups to lay down and conserve cash while public tech stocks continue to hammer. Game infrastructure company Unity is trading more than 80% below the November 2021 highs, while games platform Roblox is trading about 75% below the highs reached during the same period.
