Investors pour $1.8B into Epic Games, maker of Fortnite; company’s value hits $17.3B

Epic Games, the Cary-based maker of the popular video game Fortnite, has raised another massive round of capital from investors. The company said Thursday that it had raised $1.78 billion from investors — an injection of cash that now values the video game maker at $17.3 billion.

The company is by far the most valuable venture-capital-backed company in the state, and Tim Sweeney, its founder and CEO, is edging closer to being the richest person in North Carolina.

Investors in the company now include BlackRock, Fidelity, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper.

Sweeney said in a statement that the money will be used to invest in 3D technology and in the company’s digital storefront, the Epic Games Store.

“Having the support of leaders in the financial community accelerates Epic’s efforts to build a new kind of digital ecosystem using real-time 3D technology, services that connect hundreds of millions of people, and a digital storefront that offers a fair business model,” Sweeney said in the statement. “We are delighted to have them as part of the Epic family.

In recent time, Sweeney has been active in calling out tech giants like Apple and Google for the fees they charge game developers on their app store. Epic’s own store charges a smaller fee for developers than Apple’s App Store and the Google Play app store.

The new funding round is the largest investment raise in North Carolina this year by far. The company’s 2018 raise was the largest in the entire country for that year.

Founded in 1991, Epic has grown rapidly since the release of Fortnite in 2017. The video game company is expanding its headquarters in Cary to make room for up to an additional 2,000 employees.

Source: The News & Observer

By  Zachery Eanes

Can’t stop reading? Read more