Haun Ventures leads $10 million investment in crypto gaming startup Argus Labs

Haun Ventures today announced that it led a $10 million seed round for San Francisco-based Argus Labs, a crypto game developer and publisher.

Concurrently, Argus launched its World Engine, a new blockchain-based software development kit designed to help other developers build and customize interoperable game worlds.

In a blog post published today, Argus Labs founder Scott Sunarto, who previously created the game Dark Forest as a teenager, said that while “online games were born from the internet, they are siloed, cut off from the vast potential of a connected universe.” He views World Engine — an “open-source, connected layer 2 of sharded blockchains that will serve as the backbone for the Internet of Games” — as a solution, according to today’s announcement.

Haun Ventures, the venture capital firm founded by former Andreessen Horowitz general partner Katie Haun, raised $1.5 billion for two crypto investment funds in early 2022 — much of which it is yet to deploy.

Other angel investors in tech and gaming — including Elad Gil, Balaji Srinivasan and Siqi Chen, Kevin Aluwi, Sunny Agarwal, Calvin Liu and Scott Moore — also participated in the round, alongside Robot Ventures, Anagram and Dispersion Capital.