Gardens Interactive has raised over $35 million in a Series B funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to more than $70 million.
Additional investors in the round are Zenith Capital, Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Accel, Innovation Endeavours, and Bayshore.
Individual investors include Stewart Butterfield (co-founder and former CEO of Slack), Andy Zhong (founder and CEO of FunPlus), and Thomas Dimson (co-creator of OpenAI’s Sora).
Moritz Baier-Lentz, head of gaming and interactive media at Lightspeed Venture Partners, has joined Gardens Interactive as an independent advisor. Former TikTok COO V Pappas will serve as Lightspeed’s representative on the developer’s board of directors.
Mike Hong, director of Krafton’s investments and business analysis, will represent the South Korean developer on the board. Hong succeeds Maria Park, Krafton’s head of corporate development, who will join Gardens Interactive’s leadership team as an independent advisor.
Gardens Interactive was co-founded by industry veterans responsible for titles including Journey, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Sky: Children of the Light. The studio is currently developing its debut game under the working title Project Gardens.
Project Gardens is a multiplayer game described as a “shared fantasy adventure” with “social roleplay elements.”
“Social roleplay means empowering players to be the engines of one another’s adventures, to give them the tools to express themselves, connect and communicate – to invite them to forge lasting relationships, landmark memories, and to transform the world together. We’re proud to also unite this incredible group of investors,” said Gardens Interactive CEO Stephen Bell.
“This funding gives us the room to ship a game of this scale properly, and to keep it alive and evolving for years to come. Our ambition is to grow Gardens into the global leader of prestige social entertainment, and we are deeply grateful for our partners – those who have been with us from the beginning, and those who are new to our adventure party – for believing in our vision and for recognising social roleplay and player-driven worldbuilding as a massive and majorly underserved category.”