Vietnamese startup behind Axie Infinity raises $7.5m in Series A funding

Vietnamese gaming startup Sky Mavis, the company behind the popular blockchain game Axie Infinity, announced that it raised $7.5 million in its Series A funding round to scale its games.

The company said UK-based investor Libertus Capital led the funding round, with a host of institutional and investors participating, including Collab + Currency, Blocktower Capital, 500 Startups Vietnam, and Backed VC.

The blockchain venture was founded in early 2018 by Larsen, Nguyễn Thành Trung, Đoàn Minh Tú, , Hồ Sỹ Việt Anh and Jeffrey Samuel Kim Zirlin. It raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Animoca Brands, Hashed, Pangea Blockchain Fund, Consensys, and 500 Startups Vietnam.

The fresh capital will be used to scale Axie Infinity, a genre-defining digital nation that’s jump-starting a mass migration towards NFT gaming, to billions of users. The startup also plans hire aggressively to bolster its “ranks wit missionaries”.

“We believe that games, with real, player-owned economies will become places where we live, work, and play. These new digital nations will take time to build and require expertise in philosophy, economy, and game design,” said Sky Mavis COO and co-founder Aleksander Leonard Larsen.

Sky Mavis creates virtual worlds with player owned-economies and marketplaces for trustless trading of unique digital assets, besides infrastructure that enables its products to reach millions of players worldwide.

Its flagship game, Axie Infinity, has grown to be the largest NFT gaming ecosystem, with over 41,000 daily active users, over $15 million in monthly NFT volume, and a fully diluted market cap of over $2 billion.

About 50% of the game’s players are from Southeast Asia, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia.

“Axie’s success will act as a magnet to attract more builders to NFT gaming. We’ll help these pioneers launch and scale their projects both technically using Ronin and by introducing our peerless community to their products,” Sky Mavis said.

“Blockchain enables the user to truly own their game assets by using NFTs. Our data shows that they become more engaged and confident in spending money, knowing they can always sell them if they want,” the startup added.