Irreverent Labs, a Seattle-based business, has secured $40 million in new funding led by Silicon Valley company Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The funds will be used to build MechaFightClub, an NFT-based fighting game that puts chicken-style combat games against one another. The funding was revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. This round of funding included Solana Ventures, the venture capital arm of Solana Labs, as well as Michael Ovitz, the creator of Creative Artists Agency (CAA).
Irreverent Labs co-founder Rahul Sood stated:
“Gamers will soon realise that having ownership of the characters within the game and building a relationship with that character over time is actually a really good thing.”
The game is in the Play-to-Earn (P2E) or GameFi mode. P2E is a prominent business model in the blockchain gaming world that combines Web3 with blockchain, and it correlates to the popular F2P (Free-to-Play) model in the current world of gaming.
The platform will include cutting-edge technology like artificial intelligence and NFTs to run on the Solana blockchain, letting gamers exchange “mechanical robot” fighter aircraft and play “cruelty-free” fighting games at any time. All of the characters in irreverent Labs’ games and entertainment are AI-powered NPCs. Gold nuggets, the blockchain currency, may be used to make in-game purchases or be withdrawn for use on the Solana blockchain.
Irreverent Labs has received $5 million in investment in one round. On October 29, 2021, the seed round was raised. Irreverent Labs, an emergent blockchain business, raised a record $25.2 billion last year, an increase of 713% year over year.
