Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm based in the Silicon Valley, unveils a new fund devoted to gaming. Games Fund One is a $600M fund dedicated to “building the future of the games industry.”
Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, mainly invests in early-stage start-ups and established growth companies. The venture capital firm has invested in various technologies, such as mobile, cryptocurrency, e-commerce, cloud computing, and SaaS. Today, the company announced the creation of Games Fund One to inject more money into gaming.
“Having been investors in this space for more than a decade, it’s clear to us the industry has entered a new era,” declared Andreessen Horowitz’s partners Andrew Chen, Jonathan Lai, and James Gwertzman. “There is no better time than now to build a fund focused on supporting the next generation of games builders.”
Games Fund One is not the first step Andreessen Horowitz makes toward gaming. The venture capital firm already invested in game studios, such as Zynga and Oculus. With this new project, the company wants to help game creators as they believe that “games will play a pivotal role in defining how we socialize, play, and work over the next century.”
The $600M fund of Games Fund One will focus on three main themes:
- Games Studios, to give more means to game developers;
- Games x Consumer, to promote social apps like Discord or platforms like Twitch;
- Infrastructure, to create new tools and services geared toward gaming.
To help Andreesson Horowitz make the best investment decisions, several industry leaders are working alongside the fund. Among those advisors are Roblox founder David Baszucki, Discord founder Jason Citron, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Riot Games co-founder Marc Merill, Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, and King founder Riccardo Zacconi.