A16z leads a $150 million funding round for NFT game platform Mythical Games

Mythical Games, a blockchain-based gaming company, has raised $150 million in a Series C round led by Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) at a $1.25 billion valuation. The firm will use the funds to expand its team, scale operations, and bring new game developers to its non-fungible token (NFT) platform.

The American venture firm Andressen Horowitz led the funding round, which also saw participation from D1 Capital, RedBird Capital, The Raine Group, Binance, FTX, 32 Equity, the venture arm of the National Football League, The Chainsmokers’s Mantis, and others.

Prior investors in Mythical Games, including Galaxy Interactive, WestCap, 01 Advisors, Javelin Partners, Struck Capital, Alumni Ventures, and Signum Growth Investments, also participated in Mythical Gaming’s most recent funding round. The startup closed its $75 million Series B round in early June.

In all, Mythical Games raised more than $270 million in funding, earning the majority of it — $225 million — in 2021, according to a company release. The startup intends to use the funding to continue expanding its team and building NFT-based, play-to-earn games.

Arianna Simpson, general partner with Andreessen Horowitz, said in a statement:

“Mythical Games played a formative role in the development of play-to-earn concepts, and has clearly established itself as a top player among gaming technology studios, attracting mainstream players with its distinctive design and quality gameplay. We’re thrilled to partner with them to bring NFT gaming to an even larger stage.”

John Linden, CEO of Mythical, said in an interview with GamesBeat:

“We weren’t planning on raising, and Andreessen came to us and put together a round for us, which was great. We’re very honored to be a portfolio company of Andreessen Horowitz.”

Los Angeles-based Mythical Games is pioneering the idea of “playable NFTs,” using NFT technology to uniquely identify game characters so players can truly own them. NFTs use blockchain, the secure and transparent digital ledger, to authenticate unique digital items.

Blankos Block Party, the company’s first game, has vinyl-style game characters who you can earn (through gameplay), buy, or sell. It has a marketplace where players can buy and sell their characters, which can be customized or decorated with various things earned in the game.

One of the reasons for the excitement around Mythical is that it could be a bridge between blockchain technology and the triple-A game community, which has been reticent about diving into blockchain games out of fear of things, such as scams, regulator crackdowns, and hostility from gamers.

A16z, the known venture capital company, has been very active in putting funds behind startups involved in the blockchain gaming industry. Just last month, A16z was involved in the latest funding round of Axie Infinity, the play-to-earn blockchain game built on Ethereum. The company led the funding round, which raised $152 million and gave the game a valuation of $3 billion.

In the same way, Yield Guild Games, a guild group that specializes in extracting value from play to earn experiences, got a fund injection by A16z, which led its $4.6 million funding round last August. A16z also led the $100 million series B funding round for Opensea, a leading NFT marketplace on top of the Ethereum blockchain in July.