Popular South Korean game developer, Wemade, which has forayed into blockchain ventures aggressively in recent years, has been backed by tech giant Microsoft as part of their increasing interest in the Web3 space.
In an official press release, Wemade shared that it has raised $46 million from Microsoft, Shinhan Asset Management and Kiwoom Securities. Wemade revealed in a regulatory filing that the company is raising the capital by selling convertible bonds.
The chief executive of Wemade, Henry Chang said, “This is a meaningful investment by reputable financial and strategic investors with proven track records, Wemade and Wemix will continue to exert efforts to attract more capital and actively invest to build the global digital economy platform.”
Wemade has been looking into ways to incorporate blockchain technology into its new games and other offerings over the past few years. It released a stablecoin and a DeFi platform recently in addition to launching Wemix 3.0, its blockchain, on the mainnet.
The company says it is planning to “transform everyday games with blockchain technology and establish its Wemix coin as a key currency in the blockchain gaming space.”
“A new economy platform NILE that supports NFT and DAO will be introduced soon as well,” said Wemade in the press release.
In recent years, numerous tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, and illustrious banks, have made a number of investments in the web3 sector. According to Web3 Signals, ConsenSys, the company behind the MetaMask wallet, enterprise solutions like Infura, decentralized data storage Space and Time, and NFT studio Palm, are also backed by Microsoft.
According to regulatory filings, Microsoft, which manages the Xbox gaming environment, invested $14.8 million in Wemade through the purchase of convertible bonds, Shinhan $21.2 million and Kiwoom $10.5 million.
Similar push by Netflix is also seen in the cloud gaming sector in recent months with the company buying various game studios and establishing their own in-house studios as part of expanding their platform into a streaming service while also provides cloud gaming for its users.