In our inaugural update, we discuss our new investment in Mentra, as well as the dramatic rise of the Roblox game Grow a Garden, and more. As always, please reach out to our team for any follow-up questions.
🌉 About: The leading open-source operating system for smart glasses.
👑 Team: World-class team with backgrounds in cognitive augmentation and spatial computing.
🙈 Round: TIRTA participated in Mentra’s oversubscribed $6M Seed round led by Toyota Ventures out of YC W25 batch.
If you thought Roblox was just a successful gaming platform, it might be time for a reevaluation. Roblox has crossed the, well, Roblicon, reaching over 500 million monthly active users as of June 2025, introducing programmatic advertising in 2024, and becoming a gated ecosystem that in many ways is competing with Instagram or TikTok for entertainment time. To provide a sense of scale, Roblox has more MAUs than PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam (PC) combined, and is growing 5x faster! Top games on Roblox are starting to generate revenues at the scale of free-to-play mobile games, something unheard of just a few years ago.
The latest proof point is Grow a Garden, a game on Roblox which was released in March 2025 and by mid-June had exploded, peaking with over 21 million concurrent users (the highest for any game, ever). While it’s doubtful that Grow a Garden will sustain its current audience, we’re certain to see more games (and developers) finding massive success on the platform.
We anticipated this shift - hence our investments in UGC content companies such as Voldex, which operates Roblox-native games like Brookhaven, and are impressed by the dramatic pace of change. We see advertising as likely to become Roblox’s main source of revenue in the next few years – possibly the majority within five years. Look for more deals in this area in the future.
On another note, Roblox’s recent success has yet to translate to other UGC platforms. While it’s undoubtably growing the overall pie (by bringing in a massive cohort of first time gamers), it’s also drawing attention away from competing games.
Roblox’s CCU lead over Fortnite has increased from 4x in late 2024 to 11x in the past month.
Source: RoMonitor.
