Unity Raises $400 Million, Now Worth $2.6 Billion
Earlier today John Riccitiello, the CEO of Unity Technologies, revealed to Bloomberg LP that the game engine maker had raised $400 million from private equity firm Silver Lake. The investment values Unity at $2.6 billion, up from $1.5 billion just last July.
The meteoric rise in Unity's value is largely due to the continued dominance of the engine in the development of mobile games. Another growing market for Unity is AR/VR. The company stated that about 70% of all AR/VR content is built on Unity. Hit mobile games built on Unity's engine include Pokemon Go, Hearthstone, and Tecent's latest hit King of Glory which made over $400 million in revenue in a single month.
While Unity has no pressing need for the $400 million they just raised, the deal allows many early employees and others sitting on private shares to cash out and 'go buy cars':
"A big chunk of it is secondary and that’s because it makes sense to let employees buy cars," Riccitiello said. "In terms of primary capital we don’t ultimately need all that primary capital—the capital is safety when we’re investing to grow as fast as we are."
Given the level of success enjoyed by hit Unity-powered mobile games, I'm actually shocked the San Fransisco based company is 'only' worth $2.6 billion. How do I invest?
Unity Technologies was founded in 2004 and has since grown to over 1400 employees. Games and apps using Unity's engine reach 2.4 billion devices worldwide according to company statements.
Expect many other gaming related investments to make headlines. There's a whole lot of money sloshing around the sector. Silver Lake is sitting on another $15 billion it intends to invest in technology. Softbank, which recently bought a large stake in the cloud based distributed server company Improbable, launched a $100 billion technology fund. Tencent, Netmarble, Nexon, and others are also chasing technology deals worldwide.
Further Reading: Silver Lake Invests $400 MIllion in gaming Toolmaker Unity [Bloomberg]
