07-05-2025
Game, Sett, Funding: a startup building AI agents for game development emerges from stealth with $27M
Games drove the creation of GPU processors back in the 1990s, so it's only fitting that artificial intelligence — the technology that GPUs are used to power nowadays — is making its way into nearly every aspect of video game design. In keeping with that trend, on Wednesday a startup called Sett — which is building AI agents to build and run mobile games — is emerging from stealth with $27 million in funding.
The funding was raised in two tranches, the most recent of which was a $15 million Series A, led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Saga VC, Vgames and Akin Babayigit — the founder and former head of the UK-based games unicorn Tripledot, who now heads VC firm Arcadia Gaming Advisors — also invested.
Earlier, Sett had raised $12 million in seed funding from F2, Bessemer, and some gaming industry leaders as angel investors.
(In a case of uncanny timing, sources tell me that AppLovin, a would-be competitor of Sett's, is today announcing the sale of its gaming assets to Tripledot. That deal, for $800 million — not $900 million as AppLovin previously estimated — is set to be publicly confirmed later today around AppLovin's Q1 earnings. More on that below.)
Up to now, Tel Aviv-based Sett has taken the same approach to 'stealth mode' as a lot of other B2B startups. Since being founded in 2022, it's been under the radar, honing product-market fit and nurturing its early customer base. Today, that customer list features Zynga, Scopely, Playtika, SuperPlay, Rovio, Plarium, Candivore and Unity.
It announced a website five months ago, but now that it's fully out of stealth, Sett is still not putting its pedal to the marketing metal. It says it has over 100 gaming studios on a waiting list to be onboarded, and so the plan is to use the new funding to hire engineers and AI specialists.
As for the product, the focus is on what CEO Amit Carmi — who co-founded the company with CTO Yoni Blumenfeld — believes is one of the biggest pain points in the mobile gaming business: Getting noticed.
'Gaming is one of the most competitive industries in the world,' he told TechCrunch in an interview. 'There are a lot of players, but you actually have more games than people. It's pretty easy to build games, but almost impossible, statistically, to make a game that is successful.'
(R-L) SETT's CTO Yoni Blumenfeld and CEO Amit Carmi. Image Credits: Sett
Image Credits:Sett
Companies spend a lot on user acquisition marketing to improve those chances of success, he continued, but typically it's very expensive to build and place that content. On average, approximately $29 billion is spent to make around $100 billion in revenue, according to research from AppsFlyer.
