A16z Leads $150M Round for NFT Game Platform Mythical Games at $1.25B Valuation

Mythical Games has raised $150 million in a Series C round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) at a $1.25 billion valuation, the company announced Thursday. The firm will use the funds to expand its team, scale operations and bring new game developers to its non-fungible token (NFT) platform.

Mythical has now raised over $270 million, with $225 million of that total raised in 2021. The startup closed its $75 million Series B round in early June.

Other participants in the Series C round included Binance, FTX, D1 Capital, RedBird Capital and The Raine Group. Galaxy Interactive was among the returning investors.

A number of entertainment brands and personalities also joined the funding, including the investment vehicles of the National Football League, the band The Chainsmokers and OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder.

Mythical Games opened early access for its Blankos Block Party game earlier this year. Blankos Block Party is an open-world multiplayer game focused on custom art and design, building and exploration, and curating a collection of Blankos, which are digital vinyl toys. Each Blanko is a NFT that players can sell to each other for real money on the Mythical Marketplace.

Mythical also plans to license its Mythical Marketplace and Mythical Economic Engine to other developers. Earlier this week, Mythical announced its first developer partners. The company will help fund three new play-to-earn projects for its platform: an action strategy game from publisher Abstraction Games; a racing game from Creative Mobile, the studio behind the popular Nitro Nation franchise; and a digital trading card game developed by CCG Lab.

“Players spend billions of dollars on digital assets each year, but the value of their collections has been locked away from them. Utilizing NFTs in gaming creates a whole new set of game design principles built around scarcity vs. inflationary free-to-play economies,” said John Linden, co-founder and CEO of Mythical Games, in the company’s press release.

“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,” said a16z general partner Arianna Simpson in the release.