16 October, 2024
Exclusive: Series, a GenAI game development platform, has quietly raised $28M from Netflix, Dell, a16z, others
It’s been quite the year for gaming industry exec Pany Haritatos.
Last month, he quietly closed an oversubscribed $28 million Series A for his new game studio startup Series Entertainment, according to an SEC document and confirmation from the company. Investors include Netflix, Dell Technologies Capital, with follow-on investments from seed investors Andreessen Horowitz, BITKRAFT, and F4 Fund. This comes after launching the company only a year ago with a healthy $7.9 million seed led by a16z.
In between, he’s already made an acquisition. Series bought mobile game studio Pixelberry in July, best known for its interactive fiction game Choices: Stories You Play.
Series, also known in the industry as Series AI, is on a mission to create video games using LLMs and GenAI. But more than that, it’s gunning to be the new Unity, powering legions of game developers. Haritatos and team have created the Rho Engine, which uses GenAI to help game developers build games speedily.
One can be skeptical that LLMs will really be the panacea to humanity that its loudest proponents claim. But gaming is definitely one of the areas that AI is glowing up.
Instead of designing everything from characters to elixir bottles, game developers can have AI step in to do that work and to make games more interactive than ever. NPCs can turn into rich, fully developed characters that, for instance, haggle with the gamer. Players can be given vast, perhaps unlimited, capacities for customization. And so on.
But to do all that, developers need AI-enhanced game engines. Series bills Rho as the first AI-native, multimodal full-stack game creation platform – meaning it handles visuals and audio. To be fair, there are other AI gaming engine competitors out there including, for instance, Modi.ai Engine, and Unity’s Muse Chat. But Rho says it sits in a different spot. Modi.ai performs tasks like bug catching, or identifying reasons why the games are crashing. Series views Muse Chat as more of an AI assistant. Rho, the company says, is intended for full-stack game development.
A16z investors Joshua Lu and Andrew Chen were so excited to land the seed deal a year ago with Haritatos that they penned a blog post calling Series, “a game studio and technology company that is reinventing the future of game development with generative AI.”
Part of what excited these investors was Haritatos himself. He has decades in game development and a knack of being on the cutting edge at just the right time. When Adobe’s Flash player emerged in the late 1990’s as a multimedia tech, he built his first studio making browser games and sold it to Zynga. Then he built a mobile game studio and sold it to Kongregate – a site that rose during the Flash games era. Haritatos later became CEO of Kongregate (eventually selling the company to Swedish gaming studio MTG). In 2020, he was hired to lead Snap’s games group, developing augmented reality and embedded games.
Those chops are why his investors are all big names in gaming. In addition to nabbing backing from a16z’s game-specific fund, Series landed BITKRAFT. This is a firm founded by eSports pioneer Jens Hilgers who cofounded ESL and G2 Esports, and is one of the most active game investors. Ditto for F4 Fund, a firm run by David Kaye and Joakim Achrén, two game makers who have built and sold multiple studios apiece and now invest.
Series has grown from 17 employees at the start of 2024 to over 100 now, the company says, with the team coming from companies like Zynga, Machine Zone, Google, and Snap.
While Haritatos declined an interview after TechCrunch discovered the Series A raise, his people sent an emailed statement from him that praised his investors and said, “We are thrilled that we raised a very successful $28 million Series A during a tough year for funding.”
Pitchbook estimates the Series A was for about 15% of the company, giving Series a $190 million post-money valuation. The company declined comment on the accuracy of that number.
Subscription management platform RevenueCat acquires a ‘spicy’ audiobooks app (??!!)
On the heels of its earlier $12 million fundraise, subscription management platform RevenueCat has made its first acquisition — and it’s an unusual one. Instead of acquiring a company to add more tools to its platform, it’s buying an app offering subscriptions to “spicy” audiobooks, Dipsea.
No, this isn’t a massive pivot for the popular platform used by more than 30,000 app developers, including Notion, VSCO, Ladder, Photoroom, Buffer, and others.
Instead, the novel idea here is to bring a subscription-based app in-house to serve as a testing ground for RevenueCat’s new features and functionality, the company says. Plus, it will serve as part of RevenueCat’s “build in public” philosophy.
Dipsea’s app works with authors and narrators (and ElevenLabs‘ AI voice technology) to produce a variety of romantic fictional tales with a focus on the female gaze. Currently, Dipsea has a fairly robust business, with 93,847 paying subscribers and an ARR of close to $6 million. Last month, the app pulled in $505,920, for instance.
Though the app is doing well, as a venture-backed startup in today’s tightened regulatory environment, it was having trouble finding an exit. As a longtime RevenueCat customer, this presented an unusual opportunity.
“I’ve known Faye [Keegan, CEO and co-founder of Dipsea] since nearly the beginning of RevenueCat,” says co-founder and CEO Jacob Eiting. “We’ve gotten to know each other more over the years, and just always felt like it’s hard to find people to understand RevenueCat’s customer problems as deeply as somebody who’s lived it.”
Eiting says that when the chance to acquire the Dipsea operation appeared, he thought it would prove to be a chance to actually try to operate a live app, using RevenueCat’s tools, so the company could make sure it was staying up-to-date on what the real challenges are for subscriptions apps on today’s App Store.
“The App Store has completely turned over in the time since we started,” he says. “All the tactics have completely changed.”
Today app developers face the typical issues of user acquisition, conversion, and retention, but the subscription economy itself has grown at least 10 times since RevenueCat began operating, Eiting says. Competition is fiercer, too. For every popular app category, there are at least seven other viable competitors. In addition, Apple’s launch of the user privacy measure ATT (App Tracking Transparency) has affected developers’ user acquisition efforts.
“It’s definitely gotten harder and more sophisticated,” Eiting says. “And RevenueCat is part of that — democratizing that — taking techniques that different apps have figured out on their own and bringing that to everybody out of the box.”
Still, running a subscription-based audiobooks app will be a new frontier for RevenueCat.
To help with this, the acquisition is bringing aboard Keegan and her five-person team, who will continue to update the app and integrate the new tools that RevenueCat wants to test.
By owning its own app, RevenueCat can experiment with new techniques before trying to convince its own paying customers they’re worth the risk. And, in addition to testing tools, the app can serve as a demo to potential customers who want to go hands-on with RevenueCat’s dashboard before they commit.
“Joining forces opens up new possibilities for Dipsea,” Keegan said in a statement shared with TechCrunch. “We’ll tap into the wealth of subscription growth experience inside the company, and partner with them to keep building great features that help developers make more money while providing our Dipsea users with the content they love. I couldn’t be more thrilled to join the team.”
Dipsea was backed by investors including Bedrock, Thrive Capital, Powerhouse Capital, Lemonade Capital, Riverside Ventures, Amboy Street Ventures, Jackalope Ventures, Bossanova Investimentos, and Niche Capital, as well as other seed-stage VC firms and angel investors. To date, it had raised $13.63 million, according to PitchBook. In buying Dipsea, RevenueCat bought out all the investors on the app’s cap table, while still allowing the app to continue operating its business and fulfilling its mission.
Deal terms were not disclosed, but it was an all-cash acquisition, we understand, and a deal that’s been underway since this March. It’s not likely RevenueCat blew the entirety of its Series C on the app, so this was probably not a big win for Dipsea’s investors, from a financial standpoint.
In time, RevenueCat hopes to prove its success by growing Dipsea’s subscription business, which it can then use as an example to its existing customers.
“It means that we can tell you subscriber numbers and revenue numbers because, when the demo environment is live, you can just log in and check what it looks like,” notes RevenueCat VP of Marketing Rik Haandrikman.
“So if you check a year from now and it’s 50,000 subscribers, we f***** up, right?” he says with a laugh. “Something went horribly wrong.”
Keegan will start her new role at RevenueCat overseeing the Dipsea subsidiary in a couple of weeks, but the company says it will be prepping the demo environment ahead of that.
EVA, an entertainment booking platform for events, raises $2M as it expands to more cities
EVA, the platform that connects event bookers with local performers, has secured $2 million in funding as the popularity of in-person events comes back in full force. The round, which the Nashville-based startup says was more than double the target amount, values EVA at $15 million.
The recent round is timely as event organizers are witnessing a surge in attendance at in-person B2B conferences. According to a study by event management company Bizzabo, 86.4% of planners invested in more in-person events in 2023.
With the new capital, the company plans to expand its services to new markets, beginning with New York City in early December, shortly followed by Los Angeles, California. It’s currently available in seven markets: Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Chicago, Charlotte, Nashville, and New Orleans.
EVA allows event planners to book performers for various events, including corporate occasions, private parties, public events, college events, festivals, and weddings. Upon creating an account, organizers gain access to a wide selection of entertainers, ranging from Santa Claus for Christmas parties to motivational speakers, musicians, magicians, and even Taylor Swift impersonators.
The platform also enables planners to create events by inputting details such as location, date, number of guests, budget, duration, required equipment, and attire, and more for performers to apply for. Once the event details are posted, EVA’s matching algorithm suggests the most suitable entertainers and the event planner can review their profiles before making a booking. The “Teams” hub lets all team members collaborate on different events and manage invoices.
EVA not only aims to revolutionize the event-hosting industry but also seeks to provide entertainers with access to large events they may not have had the opportunity to attend previously. Many performers on the platform are emerging artists who often struggle to make a living from their craft, typically being hired for small-scale events like birthday parties or local bar gigs. EVA could potentially offer them greater exposure, serving as a reliable source of income for local performers.
Tabitha Meeks, a local Nashville singer-songwriter, told TechCrunch, “EVA has allowed me to not only grow as an artist but also live in a way that I can start to build my future…I am able to not just scrape by as a ‘starving artist,’ but actually save money.”
The company revealed to us that, over the past four years, it has helped artists earn $6 million collectively. The minimum booking fee for events is $400, however, the company shared that the average transaction ranges from $600 to $7,500.
Organizers are required to pay the entertainer 50% of the deposit prior to the event, and then entertainers collect the second half of the payment at least a week before it starts. All performers must submit a professional video before being accepted on the platform.
The company also provides both parties with performance contracts and event insurance.
“We carry a blanket, general liability, and professional liability insurance policy for our entertainers and the corporate clients,” co-founder Makenzie Stokel told us. “That was another big roadblock that corporations had with trying to book entertainers individually, is that typically these entertainers don’t carry that $5 million of insurance. That’s crazy for them to have to carry that, so we carry it ourselves on behalf of every event that we do.”
In 2015, the concept for EVA originated from the personal frustration experienced by co-founders Stokel and Channing Moreland when they attempted to organize events while studying at Belmont College. Both of them have music-related backgrounds and noticed that many of their artist friends were being exploited.
“At our core, we felt artists and creators deserve to be paid for their craft, and so that’s what started us down this path,” Moreland said. “We first started by building an events discovery platform to help promote [our college friends]. That led us to start producing and promoting our own events and festivals, which then led us to really understand the big problem with booking and how not transparent or easy it was.”
In 2019, the platform started offering its service to corporations. Notable companies such as Amazon, BMW, Dell, ESPN, and LinkedIn have chosen EVA as their event planning partner, using the platform to connect with entertainers and interactive offerings to spice up their events.
There are more than 2,500 entertainers available on the platform.
Investors in the latest round include the founders of Songfinch — John Williamson, Josh Kaplan, Scott Kitun, and Robert Lindquist — as well as Justin Kalifowitz of Downtown Music Holdings, Cascade Seed Fund, Stout Street Capital, and others.
EVA declined to share its current revenue run rate. However, it said that it takes a 20% platform service fee from organizers on all booked events.
Sift is building a better platform for analyzing hardware telemetry data
Less than a year after closing its seed round, software-for-hardware startup Sift announced a $17.5 million Series A led by Google’s venture capital arm GV to scale their platform for analyzing real-time data from hardware systems.
The company is developing a platform that provides a single source of truth for telemetry data. Such data is essential for engineers to understand a machine’s performance; even tiny anomalies, if missed, can spiral into catastrophe. One timely example that Sift provides is the uncrewed Starliner test mission in 2019, which experienced a software error that sent the spacecraft into the wrong orbit entirely and led to further delays and mounting expenses in the spacecraft program.
Such errors could be avoided with a more comprehensive, yet simplified, software stack for telemetry data, Sift suggests. As opposed to the fragmented sensor data that must be managed by entire teams, or else stitched together with ad hoc solutions, the company is offering nothing less than what it calls “a new paradigm”: a single platform that unifies hardware sensor data ingestion, storage, and review.
Automation is one of Sift’s biggest differentiators. In the past, a customer may have manually run tests and checked dashboards to ensure hardware health, but with Sift, they can encode “rules” into the platform instead. Sift evaluates those rules against simulations, tests, and operations, and only flags an engineer for data review when it discovers an anomaly.
“Dashboards are fundamentally the wrong solution for in-depth data analysis because there is too much noise for a human to find the signal,” Sift co-founders Austin Spiegel and Karthik Gollapudi explained in an email.
Over the next 12 months, Sift is aiming to boost every part of the software stack with artificial intelligence, from more robust anomaly detection to data review. The company is also looking to further automate parts of the compliance and regulatory review process, as these certification workflows will help engineers communicate their readiness to regulators and cut through red tape faster, Sift says.
The company already has a list of customers, including many well-known space and hardware startups, like K2 Space, Astranis, and True Anomaly. Spiegel and Gollapudi, two ex-SpaceX engineers, said that “a startup’s need for speed, flexibility and competitive advantage drives it to adopt new tech quickly, such as Sift.”
“Building internal tools requires a dedicated headcount to create, manage, and maintain and takes years,” they added. “Startups are focused on building their business as fast as possible, so building internal tools — something they may be able to do — is not a priority. Engineering hires and priorities are focused on their product. Hiring engineers with domain expertise to build a highly scalable data storage and analytics solution is challenging.”
Sift currently has 16 full-time employees and expects to more than double that number over the next 12 months.
Strava to shutter 3D mapping platform Fatmap 20 months after acquisition
Activity tracking platform and community Strava is shutting down Fatmap, the Europe-based 3D mapping platform it acquired last January.
In an email sent to users this week, accompanied by an online support page, Fatmap said that its website and app will be retired from October 1, 2024, and users will get an option to transfer their Fatmap routes to Strava until then.
While the company said it will “bring Fatmap’s 3D mapping and other features to Strava,” digging into the details reveals that much will be left out in the move.
‘Google Maps for the outdoors’
At its core, Fatmap is akin to Google Maps for the great outdoors: It serves a high-resolution 3D map platform with detailed routes for skiers, hikers, bikers and anyone else. The company was founded in the U.K. in 2013, though its core team was spread through hubs in Europe, including Germany and Lithuania.
It isn’t surprising to see Strava pulling the plug on Fatmap. Strava had said at the time of the deal that while the companies’ products would remain separate initially, it would integrate them more closely and decide whether Fatmap would live on as a standalone product.
Strava has already introduced some of Fatmap’s features, including a premium feature called Flyover that provides an aerial, 3D video recap of your route.
However, maintaining two separate products is more resource intensive than maintaining one. And with a new CEO joining in January, Strava has been doubling down on making its core product stickier and addressing key concerns raised by the community, such as cheating on leaderboards and the lack of dark mode.
Strava has stressed that it will be porting many of Fatmap’s features over to its own app as part of its premium subscription, but as with such things, the devil is very much in the details.
Strava says it’s incorporating Fatmap’s 3D satellite maps, in addition to the normal 3D maps and 3D images that it has already moved over. But while users will be able to move their routes over to Strava, this will only include elements such as route title, description and the “line” marking the route.
Related data such as assigned grades can’t be moved over, which presumably will make it difficult to assess a hill’s steepness. Additionally, Fatmap users won’t be able to transfer their photos over, though they will be able to download this data.
Other Fatmap features such as adventures, guidebooks and waypoints can’t be transferred to Strava, and users will be given the option to download this data instead using Fatmap’s data export tool.
Such omissions will render Fatmap useless for those who use it to navigate remote terrain, or for those trying to figure out whether to attempt a particular ski slope.
Fatmap says it will delete users’ data after October 1 if they haven’t taken any actions on their account before that date. Users can take matters into their own hands now and manually delete their data.
The full text of Fatmap’s email notification reads:
Hey there,
Thank you for being a dedicated member of the FATMAP community. Since we started FATMAP 10 years ago, your outdoor adventures and expeditions have made FATMAP the world’s most powerful 3D map.
FATMAP and Strava joined forces in January 2023 to make outdoor experiences more accessible. Over the next few months, we’ll bring FATMAP’s 3D mapping and other features to Strava to create the world’s best platform for planning, navigating, and sharing outdoor adventures with the largest global community of active people.
As we move towards this joint mission, we will retire the FATMAP app and website on October 1, 2024. Until then, you’ll be able to use all the FATMAP features you currently enjoy. After October 1, the FATMAP app and website will no longer be available.
If you’d like to move your FATMAP routes to Strava or receive a copy of your FATMAP adventures, routes, waypoints, photos, and guidebooks, follow the steps outlined here before October 1st. After that date, your data will be deleted permanently.
You can join Strava for free or download the app on the App Store or Google Play. Once you migrate your FATMAP routes to Strava, they will be available as Saved Routes in your Profile on the mobile app and in your Dashboard on the Strava website. When you move your FATMAP routes to Strava, you consent to your data being transferred from FATMAP to Strava, which is headquartered in the U.S. For more information about your rights regarding your personal data on FATMAP, learn more here.
Most mapping features on Strava, including route creation, route discovery, offline downloads, flyover and personal heatmaps, require a Strava subscription. If you aren’t currently a Strava subscriber, redeem a free 60-day trial by December 31, 2024. You can cancel your subscription at any time during the trial and continue to use Strava for free when your trial ends.
We’d like to say thanks once again for the part you have played in FATMAP’s community. We look forward to seeing more of your adventures on Strava in the future!
See you out there,
Team FATMAP
Fatmap email to users
Retool expands its low-code platform for creating internal apps to support external apps, too
Since launching in 2017, Retool has made a name for itself as one of the premier low-code tools for building browser-based internal line-of-business applications. The well-funded startup’s service is now used at thousands of companies, including Amazon, OpenAI, Pinterest, Plaid, Snowflake, Taco Bell and Volvo. Now, it’s expanding its focus from internal apps to also include external apps. Aptly named “Retool for External Apps,” this new service is now generally available and aims to make it easy for any business to quickly and efficiently build secure and performant apps for a far wider audience than before.
As Retool CEO and co-founder David Hsu told me, quite a few companies already started using External during its preview phase. Among those are quite a few larger businesses like Orangetheory, for example, which provided a Retool app to over 1,600 of its studio managers, as well as quite a few startups that are using the service to build MVPs while trying to find product/market fit.
For the most part, we’re not talking about consumer applications. While it’s possible to build these — and some people are — Retool’s focus is on business apps, not the next social network.
“The core idea behind Retool is basically that all internal tools have the same building blocks. They all are made up of buttons, forms, tables — stuff like that. Basically, the really cool thing that we’ve learned about applying Retool to external business software is that actually, external business software is also remarkably similar, especially the more operational external software,” Hsu said.
Most of the software written for business users today, whether internal or external, are basic CRUD apps that read and write to a database. They may differ in how they present data, but the overall functionality doesn’t vary all that much between apps. However, the vast majority of the world’s developers work on building exactly these kinds of apps from the same building blocks.
“What’s really remarkable is that, just like for internal tools, the way that people build these CRUD apps today is so primitive,” Hsu said. “You basically use React and you build it from scratch. It’s kind of shocking that people are doing this day in and day out. … We’ve realized that a lot of the learnings that we have for internal software also apply to external software.”
Building for an external audience is a bit different, though, in that things like branding, performance and the overall look and feel matter quite a bit more. But there, too, users of internal apps now expect those apps to work just like consumer apps, even if there’s still a bit more leeway there to prioritize function over form.
What you definitely can’t ignore when building external apps is security. For this, Retool added the necessary building blocks to provide authentication and authorization features. Hsu also noted that for external apps, most developers tend to use more APIs than databases, maybe in part because that gives them more control over how data is accessed.
It’s worth noting that Retool is also enabling businesses to embed new Retool apps into existing apps using its existing React and newly launched JavaScript SDKs. Retool also added features to enable invite and onboarding flows, including the ability to send custom emails from the user’s email provider of choice.
“Shipping good software to external users means builders have to think about user-facing features that often aren’t as mission-critical when the tool is only used internally. This includes customizing how users onboard and navigate through applications. Security considerations become paramount with login, password reset flows and granular permissions,” said Antony Bello, a senior product manager at Retool. “Retool for External Apps puts design flexibility and customization at the forefront so that customers can easily build white-labeled apps for external users without sacrificing security or user experience.”
In its early days, Retool’s mission was to “change the way software is built.” As Hsu noted, that left people wondering: “So what? Is it for the better? Is it for the worse?” Earlier this year, the company changed its mission to focus on bringing “good software to everyone.” With that, it also published its definition of what constitutes good software (performant, reliable, secure, etc.) and indeed, Hsu says that Retool wants its framework to become more performant than React. He believes that’s quite possible because Retool can focus on a smaller set of use cases.
LG acquires smart home platform Athom to bring third-party connectivity to its ThinQ ecosytem
LG has acquired an 80% stake in Athom, a Dutch smart home company and maker of the Homey smart home hub. According to LG’s announcement, it will purchase the remaining 20% of Athom within the next three years. However, the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
LG plans to integrate Athom’s Homey platform, which links thousands of appliances, sensors and lighting devices, with its LG ThinQ platform.
In a press release, LG said the integration will create an “AI home that delivers optimal space solutions by gaining a deeper understanding of the customer.” The integration will allow customers to create a personalized environment tailored to their preferences, the company says.
Athom will continue to operate as an independent company following the acquisition, maintaining its business operations and branding. Both the company’s founders, Emile Nijssen and Stefan Witkamp, will stay on as executives of Athom.
Founded in 2014, Athom offers its smart home hub Homey and cloud subscription services to hundreds of thousands of users primarily in Europe. Since 2023, the company’s devices have also been available in Australia, Singapore, the United States and Canada.
“The acquisition of Athom is a cornerstone for our AI home business,” said Jung Ki-hyun, executive vice president and head of LG’s Platform Business Center, in the press release. “By leveraging the synergy between the two companies, we will expand our open ecosystem and external integration services, aiming to provide customers with more diverse and multidimensional space experiences.”
Athom’s flagship product, Homey Pro, can connect to more than 50,000 devices and supports various connection methods, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Z-Wave, Matter and Thread. The Homey App Store offers around 1,000 apps for controlling home devices from companies like Philips Hue and IKEA. Athom continues to expand the range of devices and brands that can be connected to the hub, LG says.
The move recalls Samsung’s acquisition of SmartThings in 2014 for around $200 million. The company has since added SmartThings support to its TVs, appliances, wearables, and compatible smart devices.
Test automation platform Tricentis acquires SeaLights
Tricentis, the well-funded test automation platform that helps developers find bugs in their code (now with the help of AI, of course), today announced that it has acquired SeaLights, a startup that makes the automated testing process more efficient by focusing only on the code that has changed.
The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition, but it’s worth noting that SeaLights, which was founded in 2015, raised a total of $50 million, including a $30 million Series A round in 2021. The company’s investors include Red Dot Capital, Deutsche Bank, Translink Capital, Shasta Ventures, Blumberg Capital, Cisco Investments, TLV Partners and Wipro Ventures.
“We are thrilled to join forces with Tricentis, the leader in continuous testing and quality engineering,” said SeaLights CEO and co-founder Eran Sher, who will join Tricentis as EVP and general manager, Quality Intelligence. “This acquisition marks a significant milestone in our journey, enabling us to expand our reach and impact. Together, we will transform the way organizations approach software quality, making it more intelligent, efficient, and reliable. Our combined expertise will drive the next generation of quality intelligence, setting a new standard for the industry.”
At its core, SeaLights continuously checks if any code has changed and maps tests to those changes. Using machine learning, the company’s platform then also tries to quantify how risky those changes are and ensures that the new code is covered by a testing solution.
Tricentis will integrate these capabilities to provide its users with what it calls “AI-enabled quality intelligence,” including test impact analysis, quality risk management and root cause analysis.
“Tricentis pioneered the quality intelligence category with robust coverage for SAP environments, and the additional capabilities of SeaLights further extends the dominance of our comprehensive quality intelligence solutions to a wide array of applications and environments,” said Tricentis CEO Kevin Thompson.
This marks Tricentis’ seventh acquisition. It’s last acquisition was Waldo, which the company announced last July.