It’s how we build and maintain a mastery that enables unwavering conviction in the companies we back.
Today, we manage the largest set of funds with a dedicated gaming practice. We currently invest from an over $6.5 billion pool of early and growth-stage capital.
Our combination of knowledge, support, and organizational culture sets us apart within the industry.
Lightspeed has successfully invested in gaming and interactive technology for almost two decades—from early wins like Playdom and Snap to recent breakouts like Epic Games, Polygon, and Tripledot Studios.
Our core team includes a former #1 ranked professional player, a game studio founder, and a gaming-focused hedge fund analyst.
Great ideas originate and reach across the world; that’s why Lightspeed operates globally. Backed by respected and mission-aligned institutions, we solve for “doing the right thing”—with a rare ability to support our portfolio companies with the capital, talent, and network throughout their journey to greatness.
We helped many founders achieve worldwide success, and we vividly remember what it looked like at the outset of our partnership.
In an industry that glorifies individual stars and their egos, we believe that true partnerships build more repeated success—and that reputation is built from the inside out.
That’s why our team of partners invests jointly from a shared family of funds that bridges the traditional borders and limits of sectors and geographies.
Don’t just take our word for it. We’ve been investors, board members, and advisors to entrepreneurs who led the creation of video games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Halo, Destiny, Overwatch, Sky, Valorant, Apex Legends, StarCraft II, and Warcraft III.
We asked some of them about what they thought Lightspeed's superpower was.
As conviction-based investors, each of our investment partners teams up with only a few companies per year. This allows us to be with you in the trenches and continually earn our seat at the table.
Our founders deserve more than an army of advisors, but senior veterans who roll up their sleeves and generate real outcomes.
We believe access to the best talent in the world through our in-house support and partner agencies is the difference between building good companies and iconic ones.
Countless financings we led were followed by the world’s most renowned VCs, strategic parties, and angels; and our multi-stage setup allows us to reserve ample capital for follow-on investments.
We won't just give you money and high fives; we want to dream with you, work through inevitable pivots and downturns. And be by your side when you go public.
In part thanks to our global footprint, network, and relationships, we're close with all the relevant outlets and publishers in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Over the past two decades, we’ve formed deep relationships and authentic connections with every major gaming, media, and technology company.
Every year, we host the world’s leading private gaming event, convening over 250 CEOs, CFOs, and C-level executives of public companies and emerging unicorns.
We love building amazing syndicates with our founders. Here are some examples of our previous follow-on investors.
For half a century, video games have profoundly shaped consumer behavior and acted as a catalyst for significant technological innovation.
With the advent of the ‘Metaverse,’ and as an ever-increasing time of our lives is spent in immersive virtual worlds, gaming is expected to continue its pivotal role in how we play, work, and connect.
We have a heritage of partnering with gaming founders since 2006—often starting at the Seed round.
The next generation of player experiences—building alongside and together with their audience. Like Believer, Epic Games, and Methodical Games.
Infrastructure for the creation and access of virtual worlds, including artificial intelligence and extended reality. Like Inworld AI, Polygon, and Stability AI.
It’s intentional that no one’s last name is on the building. We’re at our best as a global team—and operate as a true partnership. Unlike many other firms of our size, our partners invest together from a joint family of funds.
While we’re all individually specialized, we’re collectively aligned to help entrepreneurs and innovations that transcend the borders of sectors and geographies. This is one of many reasons why every investor opens up their expertise and network to help all of our companies—from gaming to consumer, enterprise, fintech, and blockchain.
Moritz is a lifelong gamer who spent the majority of his teenage years competitively playing Blizzard’s Diablo II—culminating in a global #1 ranking among 13 million players in 2003. The first person in his family to graduate high school, he traded the digital swords and armor that he earned in-game to afford his college tuition—approximately two decades before NFTs entered the mainstream.
Like many, Paul’s formative years in technology started with gaming, where he found a way to solder modified chips on his high school classmates’ (and a few teachers’) gaming consoles so they could all play networked games together. Many years later, Paul co-founded his own game studio, Dots, which quickly rose to popularity.
Shan started her gaming journey when her cousins brought in a Subor Gaming Machine (小霸王) one Chinese New Year break. With the company of Snow Bros, Battle Tank, Street-Fighter, and later on Fantasy Westward Journey and World of Warcraft, she grew up being fascinated by the worlds created on the other side of screens.
Faraz's passion for gaming stretches back nearly three decades to countless summer days spent challenging friends to Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam on his first ever console, the Sega Genesis. His first "job" as an early teen was participating in game playtests each weekend to scrape together enough money to buy himself a PSP, to this date his favorite console of all time.
Our founders also benefit from direct access to many of today's greatest builders in gaming and technology.
