A16z’s Joshua Lu says AI is already radically changing video games and Discord is the future
Andreessen Horowitz’s partner Joshua Lu knows that, in the video game industry, you can never get too comfortable. When he was head of product at Zynga, he experienced the height of mobile games, working on hits like Words with Friends; then as a vice president at Blizzard Entertainment, he helped produce tentpole hits like Diablo Immortal. And then, as a director of product management at Meta, he learned to see games in new dimensions while working on the VR game, Horizon Worlds.
“I had to forget what I thought were universal truths and learn a whole new set of ways to do things,” Lu told TechCrunch.
Now Lu wants a front row seat to where video games are heading. After joining the firm as an investor in 2022, Lu helped launch the firm’s Speedrun accelerator, which invests $750,000 apiece into about 40 gaming startups twice a year. Now on the firm’s third cohort — with the applications for the fourth cohort now open — Lu said he’s seen how AI and new distribution platforms are changing the industry.
Half of the accelerator’s current batch are AI companies, doing everything from creating AI-crafted stories to using AI for 3D avatars. “The last game that I worked on at Blizzard took six years and a $250 million budget to ship,” he said, referring to Diablo Immortal. “But wouldn’t it be so great if that kind of quality of game could be done with a 10th of the budget and a 10th of the people?”
