Every few years, the games industry reinvents itself via new technological breakthroughs. Past examples include the Free to Play era, kickstarted by the dawn of novel game loops and monetization systems, along with the introduction of Mobile as a new distribution platform, which now accounts for $92.6B in revenue and makes up 49% of the total games market.
We are now experiencing a new transformative shift, one that could be the most impactful yet. As we’ve written previously, the generative AI revolution in games will cause the price of content to drop dramatically, going effectively to zero in some cases. This revolution will democratize the industry, enabling smaller teams to release category leading game experiences more rapidly, all without compromising on quality/fidelity, immersion, or feature sets.
That’s why we are delighted to announce that A16Z GAMES is leading the seed investment in Series AI – a game studio and technology company that is reinventing the future of game development with generative AI. In our view, AI has the potential to enable entirely new categories of games and we believe that Series AI is poised to lead the way.
Series AI’s founder, Pany Haritatos, is no stranger to harnessing the power of major shifts in the games industry. When Flash was enabling game developers to rapidly build and test web games, Pany founded a browser game studio that eventually sold to Zynga. He also founded a mobile game studio that he sold to Kongregate. At Kongregate, where he later assumed the role of CEO after selling the company to MTG, he gained firsthand insight into how the rise of mobile devices placed games in the hands of hundreds of millions of new players. Most recently, Pany led the games group at Snap that focused on the emerging platforms like augmented reality and embedded games.
Pany has assembled a team of experienced games and tech veterans from leading companies like Zynga, Machine Zone, Google, and Snap. Together, they are building a game editor and authoring engine named Rho Engine, purpose-built to harness the power of generative models. With it, the Series AI team aims to innovate on new game experiences, features, and interactions at a level of quality and speed that would previously be impossible for a company at this scale.
We’re excited to support Series AI. If you share our belief in the team’s mission to chart the future of game development, we encourage you to check out the company’s career page.
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Joshua Lu is a partner on the A16Z GAMES team at Andreessen Horowitz, where he focuses on game studios and the intersection between games and social applications.
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Andrew Chen is a General Partner for A16Z GAMES, focused on the intersection of tech and gaming — this includes AI, studios, infrastructure, and consumer apps.
