Vietnam NFT start-up Axie Infinity raises $152m

The Silicon Valley-based firm is investing via its cryptocurrency arm, a16z Crypto. Accel Partners, Samsung Next Ventures, 500 Startups Vietnam, and Not Boring Capital also participated. They were joined by crypto specialist investors such as Paradigm, Libertus Capital, and Fabric Ventures.

Axie is a Pokemon-style creature battling game that has become a global leader in the trend of players earning game-specific cryptocurrencies, which can be recycled back into the game economy or exchanged for hard cash.

The Axie coin is often used to purchase in-game NFTs, which are blockchain-based assets that are individually distinct and owned by the players, not the game developer. Even if the game is shut down, the Axie-developed NFTs remain the property of the players with a distinct value.

500 Vietnam invested in the company as early as 2019 and re-upped as part of a $7.5 million Series A round in May. This coincided with the company’s revenue surging from $100,000 at the start of the year to $197 million as of July.

“The Axie Infinity team was able to build an intensely interactive and loyal community. I saw players create Axie Infinity artwork, music, and even tattoos,” Eddie Thai, general partner at 500 Vietnam told AVCJ.

“Even so, the game was only the start. From our very first conversation with the team, they had a view that Axie Infinity would only just be the tip of the spear, that there was broader infrastructure or even a whole ecosystem to be developed.”

Andreessen has described the company in similar, revolutionary terms, noting that it has brought play-to-earn gaming into the mainstream and is “completely redefining the gaming category in the process.” It has called Axie the largest NFT gaming ecosystem globally with 1.8 million daily active users logging onto the platform in August, $33 million in daily transactions, and a total transaction volume of more than $2 billion.

The most important point about these numbers is that they were achieved without making Axie available on Apple or Google app stores. The difficulty of using Axie reveals much about user enthusiasm: Just to get started, players need to have the cryptocurrency Ethereum and a MetaMask wallet, pay $300 for the game itself, and download TestFlight, which is only available in Apple’s fee-based iOS developer program.

Axie embodies a new generation of games, where game creators are not operating from a place of fear but rather as an open, free-market economy that allows players to move freely in and out,” Arianna Simpson, a general partner at Andreessen, said in a statement.

“The new model allows gamers to actually own aspects of the game and benefit from their contributions, as the game becomes more successful and more popular. Giving players freedom and ownership in a gaming experience drives immense loyalty, as Axie has proven. What this means for the future of games, and really the web as we know it, is as big as your imagination will allow.”

Interest in NFTs has grown rapidly among generalist investors in recent months, with expectations ranging from more inclusive crypto economies to new platforms for branding, product development, and ticketing. One of the biggest Asian players in this space is Hong Kong's Animoca Brands, which raised about $89 million in May at a valuation of $1 billion from a mix of specialist and generalist investors.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Media
• Technology
• Financials
• Early-stage
• Vietnam
• Andreessen Horowitz
• Accel Partners
• Samsung
• 500 Startups
• Cryptocurrency
• blockchain
• gaming