As gaming promoted the creation of GPU processors in the 1990s, it is only relying on artificial intelligence, the technology GPUs have recently been using to power, to advance into almost every aspect of video game design. To match that trend, on Wednesday, a startup called Set, which is building AI agents to build and run mobile games, has emerged from stealth with $27 million in funding.
The funds were raised through two tranches. The latest tranche was a $15 million Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Saga VC, VGames, F2 Venture Capital and Akin Babayigit – Founder and former head of the UK-based Games Unicorn Tripledot and currently heads the VC company Arcadia Gaming Advisors.
Previously, Sett raised $12 million in seed funding as an angel investor from F2, Bessemer and some gaming industry leaders.
(In the case of creepy timing, sources say Sett’s competitor Applovin today announced its sale to triple gaming assets, which will be publicly confirmed, not Applovin’s $800 million, which has not been previously estimated, but rather its Q1 earnings.
Previously, Tel Aviv-based Sett has taken the same approach as many other B2B startups into “stealth mode.” Since it was founded in 2022, it has been under the radar, honing the fit of the product market and cultivating an early customer base. Today, its customer list features Zynga, Scopely, Playtika, Superplay, Rovio, Plarium, Candivore and Unity.
We announced our website five months ago, but now it’s completely out of stealth, so the set still doesn’t put pedals in marketing metal. With over 100 game studios on the onboard waiting list, it is planned to use the new funds to hire engineers and AI professionals.
As for the products, we focus on what Amit Carmi, CEO who co-founded the company with CTO Yoni Blumenfeld, considers to be one of the biggest problem points in the mobile gaming business.
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“Gaming is one of the most competitive industries in the world,” he told TechCrunch in an interview. “There are a lot of players, but in reality there are more games than people. It’s very easy to build a game, but statistically, it’s almost impossible to make a game that’s a success.”
Companies spend a lot of money on user acquisition marketing to improve their chances of success, but he continued, but it is usually very expensive to build and place that content. Appsflyer research shows that on average around $29 billion is spent, earning around $100 billion in revenue.
Sett’s Solution is an AI agent for game publisher marketing. As broad user-level tracking is a thing of iOS’s past, it focuses on what Carmi calls “creative content.” This is an in-game and marketing stream of interactive moments built on the aesthetics of the game, aimed at attracting users to try out new games or play more.
These “playable” ads and marketing activities are very catchy at the moment, but they are very expensive and time-consuming, similar to building new versions of the game.
That’s where the set sees opportunities. What humans had to code, place, measure before can be built using sets, startup claims 15 times faster and 25 times cheaper.
Babayigit from Arcadia knows firsthand how important marketing is to help you stand out and play the game from his days with Tripledot. He described the idea as “a simple thing” in an interview. “It’s just an incredible team, a group of incredibly talented people.”
The opportunities the set is targeting are also proven opportunities. The game studio’s assets, which Set’s competitor Applovin, sells tripled for $800 million, were first built. This is largely understood that it uses a wide range of advertising and marketing tools, including creating unique playable ads by Spur Club customers, to train the AI models Applovin currently uses in a wide range of advertising and marketing tools.
With the establishment of a wide network of AI models and users, despite the large noise of Applovin, its market capitalization is $103 billion. Game studios are no longer at the core of Applovin. Applovin, on the other hand, is set to a much larger award. This is one of the companies that publicly state that they will bid to buy Tiktok’s global business.
How many AI is there too much?
There is a big question mark for all AI services that have the ability to increase the functionality previously performed by humans. How much is it? Is it “too much” sometimes? Companies like Agave are already putting AI into a creative process. Certainly, if the Demon gets out of the bottle, that might be the case.
Karmi said he believes he will eventually build and develop an AI agent and end the marketing game, but this may not be where the set will settle down.
“I believe it’s actually a bigger opportunity than we’re doing now. That’s why we built the game engine and the agent layer so we could generate code and basically enter everything into the game itself,” he said. “The vision for the set really incorporates both marketing and in-game content for now.”
“I don’t think Genesis is about replacing ‘all aspects’ of game design and execution,” Babaigit said.
“I don’t even know if that’s possible to compete in very busy areas. The bars are very high so you have to make a game where details are very important. But what I know is that this team is working with the real technology behind them.