Meritech Capital Partners and Index Ventures Invest in Largest, User Generated-Driven Gaming Platform Helping Drive Expansion Efforts and Securing Top Talent
Roblox, the largest social platform for play, today announced the closing of a $92 million investment. The investment is the first equity financing in over five years for Roblox, and will be put toward enhancing the platform’s infrastructure and recruiting of top talent. Meritech Capital Partners (investors in Snapchat, Facebook) and Index Ventures (investors in King, Supercell) led the financing, with Meritech’s Managing Director Craig Sherman and Index’s Co-founder and Partner Neil Rimer taking observer seats on the Roblox board. The new funding follows a record-breaking year for the company, including the company’s rebranding, and an online to offline expansion with a first ever user generated toy line.
Read Neil Rimer's blog post "Generation of creators" discussing our investment in Roblox.
“The opportunity to bring in additional top tier investors that share our vision is very exciting. " said David Baszucki, CEO of Roblox. "We’re already profitable, but the additional infusion of capital helps to strengthen our balance sheet so that we can accelerate building the most social, immersive and powerful imagination platform.”
According to Sherman, “Roblox’s growth over the past two years has been one of the best-kept secrets in the industry. They’re experiencing engagement and audience numbers that rival some of the world’s biggest gaming and entertainment companies and we see the trajectory continuing to accelerate. This is an exciting time to come on board.”
Rimer added, “What we found most appealing about Roblox, aside from the impressive numbers, was the company’s internal assessment of itself not as a gaming company, but as a technology platform. Roblox enables millions to imagine and create by providing them with the tools to do so. It’s this user-generated community that will continue to engage with the platform, because there are no limits to the experience.
Through continued expansion across mobile, computer, console, and virtual reality, Roblox has reached more than 48 million active players according to the most recent report in December 2016. In addition, more than 22 million games and experiences have been created by an industry leading 1.7 million independent game creators. At peak hours, Roblox registers one million concurrent players and has seen more than 300 million hours in user engagement and play per month—ranking it third overall for children ages 6-12 years old, according to comScore (Nov’16).
To bring the spirit of play from the virtual world to the family room, Roblox collaborated with toy licensing company, Jazwares, on a new toy line consisting of popular user-generated characters. The toy line, available at Toys R’ Us and other stores, can be found online at www.roblox.com and www.jazwares.com. The deal marks the beginning of an offline strategy that will bring Roblox to retail throughout 2017 and beyond.
Prior funding was led by Altos Ventures and First Round Capital with a total investment of $10.5 million.
About ROBLOX
Roblox is the largest social platform for play that allows kids to imagine, create, and play together in immersive 3D worlds. Over 22 million user-generated online games have been produced on the Roblox platform with over 48 million players visiting Roblox every month to create adventures, play games, roleplay, and learn with friends in a family-friendly environment. Roblox is accessible on all modern smartphones, tablets, desktops, Xbox One, Oculus Rift, and other popular VR platforms. Roblox was ranked #37 in the Consumer Products and Services category for overall revenue in Inc. Magazine’s 2016 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America. Roblox – Powering Imagination. For more information, please visit https://corp.roblox.com.
Published — March 14, 2017
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