Andreessen Horowitz has raised a $600 million fund to invest in games. The storied venture capital firm is already a big investor in games, but Games Fund One will be A16z’s first fund targeted solely at games.

A16z investors Andrew Chen, Jonathan Lai, and James Gwertzman said in a blog post that the fund is dedicated to building the future of the games industry.

“Having been investors in this space for more than a decade, it’s clear to us the industry has entered a new era, and there is no better time than now to build a fund focused on supporting the next generation of games builders,” they said.

The fund is based on the idea that games will play a pivotal role in defining how we socialize, play, and work over the next century. Over the past decade, games have undergone a radical transformation, from simply being packaged entertainment to becoming online services that more closely resemble social networks and scale like consumer technology companies, they said.

The A16z investors said the most successful games today, such as Fortnite, League of Legends, and Minecraft, are communities that retain loyal, long-term users and generate billions of dollars in annual revenue. Furthermore, games are also driving innovation across the entire consumer ecosystem, pioneering best-in-class mechanisms for user engagement, retention, and monetization, such as microtransactions, battle passes, and web 3 tokens.

“We believe that over the last decade, games have fundamentally transformed from entertainment into much more — today the most successful games are online services, social networks, creator economies, virtual worlds, etc.,” Lai said in an email to GamesBeat. “Games like Fortnite, League of Legends, or Roblox have more in common with a modern consumer tech company like Instagram than they do the original Super Mario Bros back in the 1980s. Yet, this transformation is still largely not well-understood by the public or mainstream tech investors.”

Lai added, “A16z has believed in and invested in the games industry for over a decade, and we feel like the best is yet to come. There is more innovation and building happening in games than ever before – with new areas like web3 and the metaverse, as well as a resurgence in areas like VR/AR. Our dedicated games fund will enable us to fully invest in all the opportunities we see as well as plant a flag around our long-term commitment to the space – we’re not fair-weather fans, with this fund we are committing to supporting games founders for 10+ years, through bull and bear markets, platform shifts, new technologies, and come what will.”

And long term, A16z believes games infrastructure and technologies will be key building blocks of the metaverse, an
opportunity that dwarfs the current $300 billion game industry itself.

What the fund will invest in

The fund will invest in the following themes:

• Game Studios: The best games today are continually update