US private equity firm Haveli Investments has invested $100m in Match Masters maker Candivore.
The Austin, Texas-based investor has acquired a minority interest in Candivore in exchange for the funding, and has previously invested in Dead By Daylight maker Behaviour Interactive. It is Haveli’s first investment in a mobile game studio.
Candivore said that Union Tech Ventures and OG Venture Partners also contributed to the investment round. The press release announcing the $100m investment also noted that Match Masters has now generated over $300m in revenue to date from 50m+ lifetime downloads.
Just after the $100m investment was announced, COO Ilya Agron told us: “Candivore is going to remain focused on growing Match Masters, both in terms of content and in terms of player base. We’re constantly adding new ways to play match-3 in a competitive manner, and have lots of ideas to implement in our pipeline.”
“As for marketing we’re keeping our focus on the US market and aim to become a household name in the casual games space. We’ll also continue supporting the studios we invested in, expecting to see the games go live towards the end of this year.”
Candivore has around 70 staff and is based in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was founded by several former Funtomic staff in 2018, including CEO Gal Goldstein, product and R&D lead Ehud Rosenberg, CTO Sahar Azran, client developer lead Alon Shkedi, backend developer lead Tom Amel, chief creative officer Zur Tamam and COO Ilya Agron.
As we reported recently, Appmagic numbers suggest that Candivore has earned over $200m from Match Masters to date, a figure that does not include platform fees and other local taxes.
As noted in our report and referenced by Agron above, Candivore had been looking to the US to expand further. This new investment will help that, added Candivore CEO Gal Goldstein.
“This investment gives us access to capital, as well as Haveli’s team of top-tier investors and operating partners, enabling us to further grow Match Masters in the United States and beyond and bring additional games to market over time.”
Haveli Investments principal Diwakar Rao added: “Candivore is a world class mobile gaming studio, and we are excited to partner with Gal and his talented team.”
“With our experienced operating partner network, we are confident Haveli is well positioned to support Candivore through its next stage of growth and drive value creation.”
