I wrote for Naavik about Homa Games’ $100 million Series B. Read the full article here.
Why I wrote about this
Sometimes deals come up that I don’t really understand. Homa’s huge raise was one of these. In the end, I think the French tech ecosystem and founder relationships played a bigger role here than pure category fundamentals.
The gist of it
Homa was founded in 2018 by two ad tech operators who understood performance marketing and data from day one. In a few short years, the company built a real hypercasual publishing business, with hundreds of millions of annual downloads and several breakout hits. It’s not the biggest player in the category, but it’s clearly a serious one.
What makes the $100 million round interesting is timing. Hypercasual publishing is a competitive, often low-margin business, and 2022 wasn’t exactly a euphoric funding environment. Investors aren’t writing checks like this just to fund more of the same. The raise only makes sense if Homa is seen as something more than a hypercasual middleman.
And that’s what the company is trying to become. Over the past couple of years, Homa has started acquiring studios, building internal development muscle, and investing in tooling and education. It has also hinted at web3 ambitions through a Sorare partnership. In plain terms: they don’t want to stay “just” a publisher. They want to move up the value chain and become a broader platform for game creators. What that actually means remains vague. In any case, it’s a much harder business to build, and likely where most of the $100 million will be spent.
Key takeaways
- $100M is a gargantuan bet on a company that started in hypercasual.
- Investors are backing expansion, not just publishing.
- The round leans heavily on French and existing investors, with relatively few well-known game-focused VCs participating.
- Raising the money is the easy part; building a true game developer platform is the real test.