Series Entertainment quietly raised $28M for its GenAI game engine and bought Pixelberry

Game studio and technology company building the Rho Engine, which uses generative AI to create visuals, audio and gameplay.

That an AI-native, multimodal full-stack game engine can power game developers the way Unity did, while the company builds its own games.

$28M Series A plus a $7.9M a16z-led seed a year earlier

Pany Haritatos, a game executive who sold studios to Zynga and Kongregate, became Kongregate's CEO and then led Snap's games group in 2020. He launched Series a year earlier with a $7.9M seed led by a16z, with BITKRAFT and F4 Fund.

In July 2024 Series bought mobile game studio Pixelberry, best known for the interactive fiction game Choices: Stories You Play. In August it closed an oversubscribed $28M Series A with Netflix and Dell Technologies Capital, and a16z, BITKRAFT and F4 following on.

By September 2024 Series had over 100 employees, up from 17 at the start of the year; Haritatos called the round 'very successful' in a tough funding year but declined an interview.

Investors backed Haritatos's decades of game development and his record of arriving at the right moment in technology shifts.

AI can generate characters, items and richer NPCs, but developers need AI-enhanced engines to do it.

Series positions Rho as full-stack game creation, unlike bug-catching or assistant tools from competitors.

Buying a content studio while building the engine gives a platform startup something to prove the tech on, but it commits it to two businesses at once.

As of 30 September 2024, Series had over 100 employees and a Series A raised in what Haritatos called a tough year for funding; it did not disclose revenue. The valuation figure is PitchBook's estimate and the engine claims are company statements; TechCrunch was skeptical that LLMs are a panacea.