Murasaki completes a €300K Strategic Investment Round from several investors, including Pro Footballer Hiroki Machida and Tohoku Spurcle

Murasaki B.V., a game studio specialising in blockchain game development and Asian creative content and marketing(based in ’s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands, led by CEO Shinnosuke Murata, hereafter referred to as ‘Murasaki’), has completed a strategic round of financing of approximately 47 million yen (€300,000) from several investors including Hiroki Machida (a professional football player) and Spurcle Corporation.

With the completion of this round, Murasaki’s total funding amount is now approximately 280 Million Yen (€1.8m).

Mr. Machida (left) and Murasaki representative Mr. Murata (right) in Antwerp, Belgium.

Funding Summary

Murasaki has completed a strategic round of funding while aiming to expand its business into the sports domain with their latest partnership with Mynet Inc. for NFT fantasy sports services. Murasaki considers this strategic round as a capital alliance to promote its future-focused businesses.

With Mr. Machida, Murasaki will collaborate in the field of sports, which will be one of the most important focuses for the company, and with Spurcle, a VC firm specialising in the revitalisation of non-urban areas of Japan, particularly in the Tohoku region, Murasaki aims to create local employment and business opportunities by connecting different regions of Japan with the global world through content creation on the blockchain.

Through this funding, Murasaki will further accelerate its business expansion as a company that has a unique portfolio of services that combine blockchain, sports, and entertainment, together with investors from a wide variety of fields.

Comments from the Investors

Hiroyuki Machida, Pro Football Player:

“In Europe, there is a lot of investment in the sports content-related market, and the money is reinvested in the development of the younger football generation which I feel contributes to raising the level of sports in Europe.

We decided to invest in Murasaki because we share the company’s vision and its entry into the fantasy sports domain.”

From their youth organisation, Hiroki Machida has worked his way up through the ranks to become a member of a Japanese professional football club, Kashima Antlers. He currently plays for a Belgian side, Union Saint-Girouard. He has been selected for the Japanese national team in various age groups.

Hideki Fukudome, Representative Director, Spurcle Corporation:

“When I came across Murasaki, I was working to launch a fund and was struggling to verbalise the value of rural areas. Through discussions with Mr. Murata, I became interested in working together with him on the ‘formation of local industries that can compete globally’ by combining the unique resources of local companies with a global perspective.

We believe that investing in Murasaki as the first project of this fund, which is being created together with local companies, will herald a new challenge for the local region. Let us work together for the future of Japan!”

After completing his graduate studies in communications engineering at Tohoku University, he worked as a digital strategy consultant at Sigmaxis, Inc., where he was involved in new business development, PMO projects, business due diligence, and data analysis for clients such as beverage manufacturers, financial institutions, specialised trading companies, and retailers.

Comments from Murasaki CEO ‘Shinnosuke Murata’ about this funding round

Since launching Murasaki, we have consistently operated our business with the spirit of representing Japan as a Japanese entrepreneur, albeit a small one.

Mr. Machida, who represents Japan on the soccer pitch overseas, and Mr. Fukudome, who is working to enliven Japan from the bottom up as a regional representative, are managing Spurcle, and together they hope to raise the presence and perspective of Japan and the Japanese people as a whole.

We would like to share our vision and collaborate with them in each business area.

About Murasaki

Murasaki is a blockchain game and creative media studio based in the Netherlands that develops content on the blockchain.

In addition to developing and operating the blockchain game ‘Cyberstella’, we also work as a creative studio for the NFT project ‘Dokyo’, including Web3 marketing business in Japan and South Korea.

In the fantasy sports field, we have partnered with Mynet and aim to develop fantasy sports in the Japanese market.