Lightspeed Leads $35M Series B Into Gardens Interactive's Social Roleplaying Bet

Gardens Interactive, a Los Angeles-based game studio focused on social roleplaying experiences, has raised $35M in Series B funding led by Lightspeed.

The round drew a broad list of participants: Zenith Capital, Index Ventures, Accel, Innovation Endeavors, Bayshore, the Nintendo Family Office, the ZeniMax Family, and individual investors Stewart Butterfield, Andy Zhong and Thomas Dimson. The funding was dated October 7, 2026.

The studio's debut title remains unrevealed. Gardens describes it as a social roleplaying "strandbox" game designed to foster human connection through player-driven worldbuilding. Gardens says the capital will be used to ship that debut game, manage live operations, and continue growing its team as it works to establish the studio as a leader in prestige social entertainment.

Underpinning the company's titles is Petri, a proprietary world engine that blends procedural and hand-authored content to create an evolving world that honors player actions. It is the technical piece of a creative thesis: games centered on unpredictable, emotional and shared human experiences.

That thesis is the work of founders Stephen Bell and Chris Bell, who started the studio around the idea that player decisions should leave a mark on the world rather than reset with each session.

The investor roster for this round mixes traditional venture firms with family offices tied to two major game publishers, the Nintendo Family Office and the ZeniMax Family, alongside angels whose backgrounds span consumer software and machine learning. Lightspeed led the round.

Gardens is betting that a strandbox format — a persistent, player-shaped world rather than a fixed narrative — can carry a durable audience even before the game has been shown publicly. The Series B gives the studio the runway to finish that game and stand up the live-operations muscle it will need once players arrive.