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. ” 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.
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