Quick take:
- The new fund will invest in studios, platforms, and technology within the gaming and interactive media space.
- Once closed, the new fund brings Bitkraft Ventures’ total assets under management to $1 billion.
- According to Bitkraft’s founding general partner, Jens Hilgers, his company maintains high conviction for Web3 games having previously backed Gods Unchained creator Immutable.
Bitkraft Ventures has launched a $275 million venture fund to invest in early-stage startups involved in gaming and interactive media. The company said once the fund is closed, it will have $1 billion in assets under management.
Bitkraft has been one of the most active venture funds in the Web3 gaming sector, having backed one of the main players in the space, Immutable, the creators of the popular blockchain game, Gods Unchained.
According to Bitkraft’s founding general partner, Jens Hilgers, his company maintains the same conviction about investing in Web3 gaming as it has ever, VentureBeat reported.
Hilgers sees the foundational technology of Web3, which focuses on implementing a digital-first world and digital asset ownership “is advancing quickly, with gains in things such as transaction speed and lower fees.”
Despite a perceived increase in layoffs in the gaming industry, Hilgers believes it’s more about a market correction after companies overhired during the pandemic period. “It isn’t too much different from the tech companies that saw their own wave of layoffs,” he said.
Hilgers also believes the increasing adoption of AI gaming and entertainment will have a great impact on the evolution of the industry, but recognises working AI into the production process to make development more efficient will be a challenge.
According to Hilgers, AI can make the production of games easier, thus reducing the capital required to build new games and accelerating the time to market. He also adds it can be used to lower risk levels if teams iterate faster, adding that its ability to scale to larger numbers is also another potential benefit to the industry.
He also highlighted one of Bitkraft’s portfolio companies Inworld AI, which wants to change the way players interact with games based on a dynamic character or map generation, as an exciting way to use AI.
“That’s a category of people using AI to bring forward truly new experiences, not just making it more efficient or faster,” he said.
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