W4 Games has raised $18 million in a Series B funding round led by Tencent and has signed an agreement with the Chinese giant to scale and bolster the Godot ecosystem in Asia.
This brings the total amount the company has raised to $33 million; in addition to Tencent, OSS Capital, LUX, Naval Ravikant and Tobias Lutke’s family office also contributed to this latest round of investment.
W4 Games was set up in 2022 by the founders of the open-source Godot engine to provide commercial services to developers using the tech, including console porting. Godot itself has seen huge growth in recent years; W4 cites SteamDB data showing that the number of Steam games using the engine rose by over 50% in 2024 and 2025. So far in 2026, 1,262 titles using Godot have been released on the platform.
“Over the past few years, Godot has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing game engine technologies, with W4 Games at the forefront of its adoption by major studios and enterprises,” Godot engine creator and W4 Games founder Juan Linietsky said in a press release about the deal. “We’re excited to work with Tencent to build on the momentum and further establish Godot Engine as a leading platform for companies creating the next generation of video games.”
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, W4 Games co-CEO Nicola Farronato adds: “We are experiencing an acceleration. We have been building the foundations over the last five years, which have really helped Godot reach its inflexion point. We’re mainly equipping ourselves to serve enterprise demand and keep making Godot more compelling for bigger projects. That can range from gaming to the XR world, to specific niches, like multiplayer, and more sophisticated users or super users to start adopting it.”
Part of the $18 million investment is going towards expanding W4 Games’ international team. The company says that its headcount will increase by 50%. W4 is only about 30 people in total, with staff working remote-first across “around 20 cities” globally.
“Expanding towards Asia will mean hiring new roles also over there,” Farronato says. “We plan to add ten-to-15 full time employees in the next 12 months. The idea is to be as capital efficient as possible; we want to grow with revenue growth and the opportunity to start this process by making a multi-year strategic plan to go to market.”
Farronato says Asia is a “fast-growing market” for both Godot and W4; the latter apparently had interest from other companies, but chose to work with Tencent because of the megacorporation’s massive ecosystem in Asia.
“It’s not only about the money,” Farronato continues. “It’s about being really willing to develop strategic activities together. And we couldn’t be more excited to start this journey. If you think about going to market in Asia alone, even if you have raised a few million, it is not enough to try to make it. Partnering with a national strategic investor is paramount if you really want to go that route in terms of markets.”
Looking at Godot and W4’s existing presence in Asia, Farronato says China and Japan are the region’s “most mature” markets. W4 already works with Chinese indie publisher Indieark, for example, as well as with Japanese firm eSol to create industrial and enterprise environments using Godot.
“There are user groups there,” he explains. “They are the second-largest markets in the world in terms of Godot active users, following the United States. There is very good localisation already in Godot, so all these countries are covered.”
Asked what W4 Games’ long-term plan or goal is, Farronato has big dreams for both his company and Godot.
“We want to become one of the top three companies in this space at a global scale,” he says. “And we want Godot to become the biggest game engine in terms of market share. If you compare now, there is still a gap to narrow between mainly Unity and Godot. It’s clear that the ambition is to keep on building, keep on making the product better and become the biggest general-purpose game engine.”
Last year, we caught up with a number of Godot developers – as well as Emilio Coppola, the Godot Foundation’s executive director – to discuss the engine’s increase in popularity, largely due to some missteps made by tech rival Unity.
To find out more about Godot and whether the open-source engine is right for you, check out our GamesIndustry.biz Academy article on the tech.