AI Gaming Agents - The Future of Video Games
In August, Nunu.ai introduced May, a fully autonomous AI gaming agent that beat 3 gym challenges in Pokemon Emerald in just 5 hours & 15 minutes - setting an AI world record.
Last week, they just raised a $6M Seed Round from a16z speedrun, the premier gaming accelerator, cementing themselves as one of the hottest names in gaming tech.
But hold on - three out of the eight gym challenges? In a kids’ game?
What’s all the hype about?
Quality Assurance (QA) Is the Bane of Every Gaming Studio’s Existence
Before a game ever hits the market, studios spend months making sure it actually works.
That means checking for bugs, stress-testing game performance, and ensuring new updates don’t break the game.
Here’s the thing: this process is slow, expensive, and brutal for all stakeholders involved.
In our deep-dive on mobile gaming, we flagged testing as a major bottleneck to a game’s lifecycle: testing alone can stretch a game’s timeline by 3-6 months.
And the costs associated with QA are just as cumbersome. Studios typically follow the 10% rule, allocating 10% of their development budget just for testing. This covers testers (rule of thumb is 1 tester per 5 developers), training, and testing equipment.
For indie studios, that number often balloons to 20% as smaller teams are less defined. Instead, the dev team has to step in as the testers - and devs are a lot more expensive.
To put this in perspective, if an indie game spent $500K on a gaming project, ~$100K goes to QA alone.
And the worst part? QA work is incredibly grueling: long hours + little pay.
Photo Creds: CharlieIntel on X
AI Gaming Agents Will Get QA Testing Done For You
Nunu.ai’s AI gaming agents fully automate testing for studios. No more testers grinding through bugs; the AI agents will take care of it.
The process is quite straightforward.
Onboarding: Nunu.ai onboards the gaming studio, integrating its SDK and educating the customer on how to use the platform
2 weeks for full onboarding
<5hrs for SDK integration
Testing: The studio uses AI gaming agents to create test cases through natural language processing:
For example, the studio can prompt the agent with “play the tutorial”, and the agent will proceed by playing the game’s tutorial
The gaming agent provides a gameplay recording, logic behind each action, error logs, and a test report
Alerts: The agent instantly notifies the team of any identified bugs via Slack or Jira, or any tool the studio prefers
The agent runs three types of tests:
Functional: Flags bugs in the gameplay
Regression: Nightly checks to ensure updates don’t break game mechanics
Performance: Tracks key metrics like FPS (frames per second), GPU load, and memory usage
In a partnership with Roboto Games, who are building a highly anticipated open-world survival game Stormforge, Nunu.ai:
Reduced cost of QA testing by 50%
Reclaimed 160+ monthly QA hours through automation
Administered 400 quality game tests every month
Nunu.ai’s team is relentlessly iterating on its gaming agents. The goal? Fully-autonomous gaming agents that can play and compete with real players.
Sports-Tech Market Activity: Investors & Deals
Venture Capital
Underdog Fantasy, an online daily fantasy sports platform hits unicorn valuation, raising $70M of expected $100M in Series C funding round (Mar. 26th)
Plans to invest rapidly in ramping up talent and product growth
Investment led by Spark Capital, valuing company at $1.23B just 5 years after its founding [Sportico]
Playback, a streaming platform dubbed ‘Twitch for sports’ that allows creators to live-stream games alongside fans, raised $22M in Seed/Series A funding (Mar. 27th)
Supplementing new deal with MLB, making Playback the first platform to let creators live stream MLB.TV games with fans
Investment backed by Khosla Ventures and Seven Seven Six; other investors include NBA Investments among others [SBJ]
Hook, a music tech platform that empowers artist monetization via fan-generated remixes, secures $3M in additional funding, bringing total funding to $6M (Mar. 26th)
Driving marketing expansion and strategic hiring, boosting user acquisition
Investment backed by Khosla Ventures, Kygo’s Palm Tree Crew, and Raine Group alongside existing investors including Point72, and Waverley Capital among others [Hook]
Pro Padel League, a North American-based padel league secures $10M seed round to drive expansion ahead of its second season (Mar. 26th)
Plans to increase prize money by 30% to $1M and expand to five events across NA, including Mexico, Miami, and NY
Investment led by Left Lane Capital; other investors include Gary Vaynerchuk, and Kactus Capital among others [SBJ]
SalesRevv, a B2B CRM fitness sales platform that develops AI agents for customer communication across various mediums, raised $3.24M in Seed funding (March 24th)
Scaling development, marketing, and AI capabilities for fitness franchises; offering sales support via email, text, and membership registration
Investment led by RTP Global and Floodgate [Athletech]
G2 Esports, a Europe-based esports club competing in League of Legends, Valorant among others, secures ‘seven-figure’ Series B funding (Mar. 24th)
Venturing into new titles, global expansion, direct-to-fan offerings, and Call of Duty League investment
Investment led by WISE Ventures; other investors include The Tornante Company and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk among others [G2 Esports]
M&A and Investments
Silver Lake takes Endeavor private, forming WME Group (Mar. 24th)
Along with partners, acquiring 100% of Endeavor's outstanding shares at $27.50
Group consolidates agencies, including WME, IMG, and Pantheon Media Group
Investment backed by Mubadala, Lexington Partners, and CPP Investments among others [SBJ]
NBA considers potential ‘$3B revenue’ opportunity through proposed European league expansion, advised by Raine Group (Mar. 25th)
NBA owners reviewing plan for a new 8-10 franchise league
Proposal values permanent franchise slots at $500M+; NBA to hold 50% equity
"Semi-open" format could allow EuroLeague teams like Real Madrid and Olympiacos to compete [Sportico]
STRIKR, a new boxing format using data-driven scoring, eyes $50M in funding to drive objective, transparent decision-making (Mar. 24th)
Tech will track punch trajectory, speed, and force via sensors in mouthguards, partnering with computer vision system, Hawk-Eye
Investors & potential partners set to attend alpha test event at The Outernet in London this week [Sky News]
Wellhub, a B2B corporate wellness platform, enters ‘definitive agreement’ to acquire European sports and wellness membership platform Urban Sports Club (Mar. 26th)
Expanding its reach to 34.5K corporate clients and 83K wellness partners
Urban Sports Club to continue operating independently while supporting Wellhub’s global growth strategy [Wellhub]
Napster, the P2P music-sharing application was acquired by metaverse developer Infinite Reality for $207M to supply metaverse for artists (Mar. 25th)
Gearing for an era beyond the ‘2D clickable web’ into a ‘conversational 3D one’
Plans to offer branded 3D virtual spaces for virtual concerts, social listening parties, and other immersive experiences [VentureBeat]
Photo Creds: ASU - ASU and GoDaddy launch a venture studio where student-athletes learn to navigate NIL licensing and build startups.
Strategic Ventures
Arizona State University and internet domain registry GoDaddy launch student-athlete venture studio to propel athlete entrepreneurs (Mar. 26th)
Offering tools and mentorship to help athletes navigate NIL licensing for business ventures
Athletes to pitch venture ideas at an annual Demo Day for seed funding opportunity [ASU]
Svexa, a human performance intelligence company, joins NVIDIA’s Inception Program for AI-Powered human performance innovation (Mar. 19th)
Svexa’s CDO highlights program’s support for expansion into corporate health and senior living markets in the next 12 months; focuses on AI-driven ‘digital twin’ technology for real-time performance recommendations. [Svexa]
Legacy Motor Club, a pro stock car racing team, partners with hydration-tracking wearables company Nix Biosensors via Nix Pro platform data (Mar. 25th)
LMC’s pit crew to wear Nix hydration sensors during races and training sessions to track sweat composition and electrolyte loss for performance optimization [SBJ]
Job Board & Opportunities: Week of March 28th
Here are some cool roles we found and personally curated this week - enjoy!