Sky Mavis: $152M Series B for Axie Infinity Creator
Fabric Ventures is doubling down on our portfolio company Axie Infinity (Sky Mavis) by joining a $152M Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Accel & Paradigm.
May 2021 — $3M in monthly revenue
June 2021 — $12M in monthly revenue
July 2021 — $197M in monthly revenue
August 2021 — $364M in monthly revenue
These were the monthly (not cumulative) revenue figures for a company in which we had invested at the beginning of the year, when they were making under $500k in monthly revenue.
The growth in user base, marketplace volumes and protocol revenues achieved by Sky Mavis and the game Axie Infinity over the past year have been unprecedented: Axie Infinity is the first NFT issuer to have broken through $2B in total traded volume and reached 1.8m daily active users (narrowly tracking Clash of Clans, as the world’s most popular game with 2m daily active users).
As the first incarnation of a successful Play-to-Earn game with true ownership of currency and game artefacts, Axie Infinity is driving incredible volumes and adoption of blockchain technology with 50% of users being newcomers to crypto-assets. The majority of users are viewing Axie Infinity as a part of their livelihood, making more from playing the game, than from traditional means of employment. Certain geographies & countries such as the Philippines have seen adoption levels reach the point where SLP (in-game currency) is widely accepted in local stores, and more people have Ronin wallets (Axie Infinity wallets) than credit cards.
To further enable global accessibility, the platform has benefitted from the rise of Guilds and Scholarships, fronting the upfront financial cost of an Axie team to tens of thousands of players across the globe. On this front, Fabric Ventures invested in Yield Guild Games (largest Guild in Axie and Scholar terms), and is actively helping build BlackPool (Yield focused NFT DAO).
We believe that Axie Infinity’s Play-to-Earn model coupled with Guilds can become a new iteration of the future of work. A model in which irrespective of geographical location, a fair and equal revenue stream can be achieved by being an active user. It might start with a game, but we foresee a future with large coordination of guilds and Play-to-Earn models leading to a democratisation of work in the digital realm, within game economies and beyond.
The Sky Mavis team has been one of the most resilient teams in the NFT & crypto space, unwaveringly building through a long bear market and always keeping their community at the centre of attention. They have not only shipped the most adopted NFT game, but have also created an entire universe of lore around Axies and their Land Universe, launched Ronin, one of Ethereum’s most popular side chains with over $1.5B in assets secured, preparing the launch of the Ronin DEX and finally expanding to The Mavis Hub to support game developers building and distributing blockchain-enabled games across multiple platforms.
We felt incredibly lucky to back the team in their $7.5M Series A barely six months ago alongside Libertus, and we are beyond excited to double down in a new $152M Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Accel & Paradigm.
Additional Resources
Sky Mavis’ Website | Twitter | Medium | Discord
To learn more about Fabric Ventures, you can visit our website, follow us on Twitter and read our investment thesis.
