Forte

Forte is a San Francisco-based blockchain infrastructure company, founded on February 21, 2019 by former Kabam CEO Kevin Chou, GarageGames CEO Josh Williams, and co-founders Brett Seyler, Kent Wakeford, and Mahesh Vellanki. The company builds compliant, interoperable blockchain tooling — including wallets, NFT minting and secondary-trading tools, and payment rails — that lets video-game publishers add player-owned digital economies to their titles.

Forte raised $185 million in a May 2021 Series A led by Griffin Gaming Partners at a $1 billion valuation, followed six months later by an additional $725 million Series B in November 2021 co-led by Sea Capital and Kora Management, bringing its disclosed funding to roughly $910 million. Forte did not disclose a post-money valuation for the Series B; some data providers have since estimated it near $5 billion, but that figure has not been confirmed by the company.

Since 2022, Forte has expanded through acquisition, buying N3TWORK's technology platform and later — without public disclosure at the time — the game studios Phoenix Labs (Dauntless, Fae Farm) and Rumble Games (Towers & Titans). Those acquisitions became public only in late 2024, alongside reporting on layoffs at both studios and the July 2024 shutdown of Rumble Games, as Forte narrowed its focus back toward its core blockchain platform business.