Gardens Interactive has raised a more than $35 million in a funding round, bringing total funding raised to date to over $70 million.
The funded is aimed at fueling the upcoming launch and live operations of their debut title, an unrevealed social roleplaying “strandbox” game. The studio confirmed that it is in the process of finalizing additional closings on a rolling basis, with the full round expected to be closed by end of month. Bloomberg reported the news first. They got the scoop on us here, but we’ve been writing about Gardens for a while and they were one of our Game Changers in 2025.
“Game studio funding is back,” said Moritz Baier-Lentz, a former Lightspeed partner and current investor, in a LinkedIn post.
The company is reating a new genre around a simple and proven design principle: deepen human connections, and let the players be the fun, Baier-Lentz said.
Led by Lightspeed, the round includes Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Accel, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, the Nintendo family (Yamauchi No.10), the ZeniMax Media family (James Altman), and the founders of Slack and OpenAI‘s Sora.
“By any measure, but certainly in 2026, that’s an extraordinary vote of confidence and tier-1 syndicate for a pre-launch studio. What inspires that conviction while it seems all venture dollars chase automation?” Baier-Lentz said. “After serving on Gardens’ board for the past three years, I’m rejoining as a personal investor and advisor, doubling down with my own capital and time. To continue an extraordinary development journey that already brought so many wonderful once-strangers together.”
Lightspeed led the round and expanded the firm’s ownership in the studio. Zenith Capital, founded by James Altman (Executive Producer on the megahit Fallout TV series and former Publishing Director at Bethesda Softworks), joined a group of new investors alongside Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Accel, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Bayshore, and others. Prominent founders and operators in the round include Stewart Butterfield (co-founder and former CEO of Slack), Andy Zhong (founder and CEO of FunPlus), and Thomas Dimson (formerly of Instagram and co-creator of OpenAI’s Sora).
For returning investor Yamauchi No.10, the Nintendo Family Office, Gardens remains the first and only gaming startup investment in over 100 years of the company’s gaming legacy.
Moritz Baier-Lentz has joined Gardens Interactive as an independent advisor, and former Tiktok COO V Pappas has joined Gardens’ board of directors, representing Lightspeed. Likewise, Mike Hong of Krafton will be joining Gardens’s board of directors, representing Krafton and replacing Maria Park, who is joining the leadership team in an independent advisory capacity. James Altman will work closely with the founders to help negotiate and manage the studio’s publishing relationships and bring the world to life across other mediums.
“We embarked on this adventure to grow the future of social roleplay, to celebrate the unpredictable miracle that is another person, said Stephen Bell, CEO of Gardens, in a statement. “Social roleplay means empowering players to be the engines of one another’s adventures, to give them the tools to express themselves, connect and communicate – to invite them to forge lasting relationships, landmark memories, and to transform the world together. We’re proud to also unite this incredible group of investors. Just like the game itself, everything is better together.”
Bell added, “This funding gives us the room to ship a game of this scale properly, and to keep it alive and evolving for years to come. Our ambition is to grow Gardens into the global leader of prestige social entertainment, and we are deeply grateful for our partners – those who have been with us from the beginning, and those who are new to our adventure party – for believing in our vision and for recognizing social roleplay and player-driven worldbuilding as a massive and majorly underserved category.”