Participated · Series A · Jul 2023

Gardens is a Los Angeles, CA–based, globally-distributed game studio led by CTO Lexie Dostal and game director Chris Bell. The studio specializes in social play—online spaces that bring players together to form lasting relationships and communities—and was founded by developers of Journey, What Remains of Edith Finch, Blaseball, Dustforce, Sky: Children of the Light, and more. Gardens emphasizes craftsmanship and sustainable development practices, including pay transparency, mentorship, and efforts to diversify the voices within the team. The company raised $31.3M in a Series A round and intends to use the funding to scale up its team. Following the round, Gardens added several high-profile advisors to its roster and expanded its board with representatives from lead investors. No operating metrics (revenue/users) were disclosed in the article.

Participated · Series A · Sep 2021

AccelByte offers a backend platform that enables developers to build, scale and operate live-service games, with services including lobby, friends, matchmaking, cloud progression, achievements, season pass, launcher and patcher. Its microservices architecture is game-engine agnostic with Unreal and Unity SDKs and supports cross-platform play across PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android. The company positions itself as a single-tenant offering where each customer is provisioned in a dedicated, massively scalable environment that is customizable and extensible. AccelByte says it has tripled its customer numbers since the Series A and that more than 30 studios are building on the platform; clients include Dreamhaven, Build A Rocket Boy, 1047 Games, KRAFTON, Deep Silver Volition, Remedy Entertainment, Raid Base and Starbreeze Studios. The Seattle-headquartered company has more than 300 employees globally, including in Canada, Indonesia and China. AccelByte plans to use the new funding to enhance its backend platform and continue developing tools to operate AAA-quality live-service games at scale. Founded in 2016 and led by CEO Junaili Lie, AccelByte provides a white-label backend solution for game studios to develop, publish, and operate Games-as-a-Service (GaaS). Its proprietary architecture includes AccelByte Cloud plus AccelByte enterprise and AccelByte Blackbox. AccelByte Cloud is described as a premium live-technology solution that simplifies game development, publishing, and operations, enabling teams to build faster, scale, and deploy without worry. The company has partnered with major publishers and developers including KRAFTON, Deep Silver Volition, Bandai Namco, Gearbox, and Remedy. AccelByte operates as an independently-operated backend and tools provider for live-service games. The company recently closed a funding round and plans to use the proceeds to expand its strategic partnerships.

Participated · Equity · May 2021

Lightforge Games was founded in 2020 by veterans from Epic Games, Blizzard Entertainment and other AAA studios and focuses on creating storytelling-rich player experiences. The studio is developing a major unannounced RPG that blends elements of Minecraft or Roblox with tabletop‑RPG‑inspired, open-ended narratives. That project is being built in Unreal Engine 5. Lightforge currently employs 18 developers, has an open salary policy, and is actively hiring to support ambitious growth targets. The company has attracted a number of high-profile industry figures as supporters and angel backers. CEO Matt Schembari said the $15 million round and its partners will help the team meet its ambitious goals and push the boundaries of player-created stories and worlds. Lightforge Games is an all-remote studio building a cross-platform social video game focused on enabling players to create worlds and tell stories collaboratively. The team aims to redefine how developers make role-playing games and emphasizes emergent, shared storytelling rather than classic UGC publishing. The studio is led by CEO Matt Schembari, a former lead engineer at Blizzard and director of user interface at Epic, and includes veterans from Blizzard, Epic, Riot, Bioware, and ZeniMax. Lightforge has 11 people and is on the verge of hiring three more, and it is hiring for remote roles. The company is based near Epic Games in Raleigh, North Carolina and raised $5 million to open the studio.