According to a SEC Form D filing Sisu Game Ventures (a Pre-Seed and Seed Fund that invests in games startups), has raised $50 million for its first close. The company declined to comment.
Paul Braigel, founder of Sisu in 2014, said that the firm had made many investments this summer, including in Zynga founders' new venture. Sisu members have been involved in entrepreneurship, investors, and operators in companies such as Remedy and Unity, Disney and Niantic.
14 investments have been made by the fund so far. The fund invests half in portfolio companies such as Resolution Games and Lightheart Entertainment and half in new additions like Core Loop, Playco and Theorycraft Games.
Braigel stated that the Sisu Fund III investor base almost exclusively comes from the games industry. This includes global studios like Supercell and platform holders like Sony and Ubisoft as well as individual studio founders.
Bragiel stated: Many founders of the Sisu family have started multiple successful ventures, and these founders are the ones we love to support. We hope that, once we have invested in a founder, we will continue to support all their future ventures.
Sisu claims it invests before a product's ready and metrics are available. It also works with individual founders through a studio builder format.
Examples of this include Lightheart Entertainment's first game Mr. Autofire and Mainframe Industries' yet unannounced cloud native MMO.
The fund has seen 8 exits so far, including the acquisition of Small Giant Games by Zynga at 700m. King also acquired Hatrabbit and Helsinki Gameworks was purchased by Next Games. Flaregames acquired Kopla Games.
