Backed by Ubisoft and Take Two, Horizon raises $40 million to develop NFT game Skyweaver

Web3 game developer Horizon has announced a $40 million Series A funding round backed by video game giants Ubisoft and Take Two Interactive. 

The funding was led by Brevan Howard Digital and Morgan Creek Digital. Other participants included Polygon, Xsolla, Initialized Capital, Everyrealm, and Bitkraft. 

Apart from investor companies, Horizon also attracted some individual investors, such as The Sandbox co-founder and COO Sebastien Borget, Axie Infinity co-founder Aleks Larsen, Shopify CEO Tobias Lutke, and Lolli CEO Alex Adelman. 

Horizon’s stellar blockchain game is Skyweaver, a virtual NFT trading card game where the cards represent Ethereum NFTs that can be sold and traded. Skyweaver launched in open beta mode earlier this year. 

Horizon will use the investment to develop and upgrade Skyweaver and to build the Sequence platform, a development wallet that allows creators to produce their own Web3 games and apps. Another ongoing creation for Horizon is Niftyswap, a decentralized marketplace for Ethereum and Polygon NFTs. 

“With Sequence, we enable builders to create the next generation of Internet experiences; with Skyweaver, we deliver a fun, strategic, and rich piece of content for gamers to enjoy; and with Niftyswap, we enable the seamless Exchange of SFTs, which are poised to become some of the world’s most useful and traded virtual goods,”

said Horizon’s CEO, Peter Kieltyka.

Horizon CFO Deborah Marfurt didn’t disclose the company’s valuation after the Series A round. However, Horizon was valued at $89.5 million after last year’s seed round of $13.3 million. 

Both Ubisoft and Take Two are some of the biggest video game developers in the world. Ubisoft created popular franchise games such as Assasin’s Creed and Far Cry, while Take Two owns video game studios Rockstar and 2K Games, creators of Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K, and Red Dead Redemption. 

Although the NFT market is slumping, with sales dropping over 60% in the third quarter of 2022, investors still seem to believe it’s a good moment to fund promising projects in the Web3 space.