Mobile game startup Tripledot Studios has become the UK’s latest unicorn after a $116m round of funding put the company’s valuation at $1.4bn (£1bn).
The London-based software firm said it will use the new funds primarily for the acquisition of other developers.
“We want to buy studios, and use our platform to take those great games to reach a much larger audience,” said Lior Shiff, co-founder and CEO of Tripledot.
Tripledot is best known for its popular puzzle games such as Woodoku and a version of solitaire, both of which boast tens of millions of downloads across app stores.
The Series B funding round is being led by 20VC, with Access Industries, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Eldridge also providing capital. This latest investment follows a $78m Series A round back in April 2021.
Co-founder and Tripledot COO Akin Babayigit said: “Our expertise in user acquisition, monetisation and data-driven product iteration allows us to scale our games quickly and very profitably. We look forward to bringing this know-how to future acquisitions.”
The unicorn valuation of Tripledot marks the latest chapter in the meteoric rise in the UK games industry, which was declared the largest video game sector in Europe and in the top five worldwide in a report from TIGA analysis in 2020.
It showed a massive increase in both the British games development workforce and the revenue generated by the sector within the UK.
The casual mobile gaming market in particular has become both extremely popular and profitable within the UK.
The puzzle game Wordle, developed by British engineer Josh Wardle, was recently bought by the New York Times for over $1m after an enormous surge in popularity.
“I think casual games are still underserved,” said Babayigit in an interview with TechCrunch.
“The recent launches of Dream, Wordle and others have unleashed two billion gamers into the world, and we think that people are now looking for other types of experiences and games,” he added. “Wordle actually proves that. So many more games can be built for those audiences, it’s still pretty crazy”.
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