{"id":341784,"date":"2017-05-24T11:40:22","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T03:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1494995"},"modified":"2017-05-24T11:40:22","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T03:40:22","slug":"unity-whose-software-powers-half-of-all-new-mobile-games-lands-400-million-from-silver-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/unity-whose-software-powers-half-of-all-new-mobile-games-lands-400-million-from-silver-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"Unity, whose software powers half of all new mobile games, lands $400 million from Silver Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Unity Technologies<\/a>,\u00a0a 13-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes development tools for video game creators, has raised $400 million in fresh funding from the private equity firm Silver Lake.\u00a0A \u201cbig chunk\u201d of the round went toward purchasing the shares of longtime employees and earlier investors, John Riccitiello told Bloomberg<\/a> earlier today, explaining that he thinks it \u201cmakes sense to let employees buy cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

The financing\u00a0follows on the heels of the company\u2019s last round, closed just 10 months ago, in which the company had raised $181 million from investors led by DFJ Growth.<\/p>\n

Others of Unity\u2019s\u00a0earlier investors include China Investment Corporation, FreeS Fund, Thrive Capital, WestSummit Capital, serial\u00a0entrepreneur Max Levchin, and Sequoia Capital, which remains its largest shareholder. (Roelof Botha, one of Sequoia\u2019s most powerful investors<\/a>, \u00a0sits on its board.)<\/p>\n

Investors valued Unity at $1.5 billion<\/a> last year, according to the New York Times. This new round reportedly brings the company\u2019s valuation to $2.6 billion.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to understand the enthusiasm around the company,\u00a0whose game engine \u2014 code that handles games\u2019 basic operations \u2014\u00a0radically speeds up the time it takes developers to produce a game.<\/p>\n

Certainly, it boasts of a\u00a0lot of very impressive metrics, among them that:\u00a0 half of all new mobile games rely on its software for their creation; it\u00a0powers 70 percent of all virtual reality and augmented reality experiences; its games and apps reach 2.4 billion devices quarterly; and that mobile developers using Unity\u2019s technology generated $12.4 billion in net revenue over the last\u00a0two years. (Undoubtedly, a big chunk of that derived from last year\u2019s breakout hit Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/a>, which Unity\u00a0somewhat famously powered.)<\/p>\n

The company says now that the new funding will be used for what it sees next, including increasingly pervasive 3D visuals that will become more pervasive in our lives.<\/p>\n

Unity does have competitors. Not one to pass up a potentially lucrative market, for example, Amazon last year introduced its own game engine<\/a> called Lumberyard. Autodesk introduced its own entrant in 2015 called Stingray<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unity is led by CEO John Riccitiello, a rock star in the game industry who previously spent five years at the helm of Electronic Arts. Riccitiello was also an early investor in Oculus VR, another Unity customer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Unity Technologies,\u00a0a 13-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes development tools for video game creators, has raised $400 million in fresh funding from the private equity firm Silver Lake.\u00a0A “big chunk” of the round went toward purchasing the shares of longtime employees and earlier investors, John Riccitiello told Bloomberg earlier today, explaining that he thinks… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

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