Griffin Gaming Partners Raises $750M Fund With Eye on Web 3

Griffin Gaming Partners announced an oversubscribed second fund with at least $750 million committed. While the fund has a broader gaming industry focus, Griffin Partners co-founders and managing directors Phil Sanderson and Nick Tuosto told CoinDesk it has already logged 16 investments related to Web 3 to date, which accounted for more than half of the deployed capital.

“[Web 3] is one of our central theses from a macro perspective within games,” Tuosto said. “It’s our view that the enablement of digital asset ownership within games may be the single most important technological unlock in the history of games.”

Investments for Griffin’s Fund II came from major institutions, university endowments, family offices, sovereign wealth funds and strategic partners in the gaming industry, Tuosto told CoinDesk.

Griffin Gaming was founded in 2019 by Sanderson, Tuosto and Peter Levin, with LionTree – a boutique merger-and-acquisition firm where Tuosto serves as managing director – as a strategic partner to Griffin, which has more than $1 billion in assets under management.

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Griffin invests in seed to growth rounds for game content, software infrastructure and social platforms, as well as gaming-related Web 3 companies. Portfolio companies include blockchain gaming platform Forte and Discord, a messaging app popular in crypto circles.

“The lines have blurred across gaming, media, sport and social connectivity,” Sanderson said in a press release. “By seeing more than 1,300 qualified investment opportunities a year, we get a bird's eye view into the industry and what it will take to succeed in the next phase of interactive entertainment across platforms, genres and demographics.”