Weekly News Digest #26

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AppsFlyer: Over $1B Series E from Google, Meta, Moloco, and Unity

US-based mobile attribution and marketing analytics company AppsFlyer raised over $1B in a Series E round at a post-money valuation of approximately $2.7B, announced on Jun 22, 2026. The valuation implies a 5.4x multiple on annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $500m. The round saw participation from four strategic investors: Moloco, Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Meta (NASDAQ: META), and Unity (NYSE: U), each acquiring a minority, non-controlling, and non-exclusive stake. All four investors are major advertising platforms whose own campaigns are measured by AppsFlyer, giving each a direct commercial interest in the platform remaining an independent, neutral arbiter. The round is widely interpreted as a pre-IPO stabilization move, with the company confirming its intention to pursue a public listing in the near term. The financing follows acquisition talks with private equity firms Apollo Global Management (NYSE: APO) and Fortissimo Capital that concluded without a transaction in Mar’26 at a proposed valuation near $1.9B.

Israeli-founded AppsFlyer was established in 2011 in Tel Aviv by Oren Kaniel (CEO) and Reshef Mann (CTO), and later relocated its headquarters to San Francisco. The company operates a cloud-based mobile measurement, attribution, and data analytics platform, serving as a neutral infrastructure provider that tracks user journeys across digital marketing touchpoints and matches app installs and post-install events to specific ad campaigns. It currently works with more than 15,000 brands globally, employs approximately 1,300 people, and has surpassed $500m in ARR. Its product portfolio spans five suites:

• Measurement Suite — cross-platform attribution across iOS, Android, web, and CTV, compliant with Apple’s SKAdNetwork and Android’s Privacy Sandbox.
• OneLink (Deep Linking Suite) — universal routing directing users to specific in-app destinations pre- or post-install.
• Data Clean Rooms — privacy-preserving architecture for secure first-party data matching across brands and ad platforms.
• Agentic AI Suite — an open framework for AI agents to query performance data and execute cross-channel campaign optimizations.
• Incrementality Suite — experimentation engine measuring true incremental marketing lift through split testing and hold-out groups.

Prior to this round, AppsFlyer had raised $294m across five rounds since Sep’12. General Atlantic‘s $210m Series D in Jan’20 was the defining milestone, establishing the company as the first unicorn in mobile attribution at $1.6B on the back of 12,000+ customers and ARR exceeding $150m, with a subsequent Salesforce Ventures (NYSE: CRM) extension in Nov’20 lifting the valuation to $2B. Acquisition talks with Apollo Global Management and Fortissimo Capital concluded without a transaction in Mar’26 at a proposed $1.9B. The Series E at $2.7B, three months later, values the company $700m above the Series D extension mark and $800m above the proposed PE valuation.

We will continue to monitor AppsFlyer’s path toward an IPO and how the strategic investor structure shapes its product roadmap across omnichannel measurement and agentic AI workflows.

General Intuition: $320m Series A to Train AI Agents on Gameplay Data

US-based AI gaming company General Intuition raised $320m in a Series A round at a post-money valuation of $2.3B. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, doubling down on its Seed position, alongside returning backer General Catalyst. Additional investors include Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Nico Rosberg, FuturePresent, Hexagon, Coalition, NPHard, co-founders of Remote and Cradle, and researchers from Google DeepMind and MIT. The round closed in Jan’26, three months after the Seed round, but was publicly announced on Jun 25, 2026. Proceeds will fund compute scaling through a partnership with CoreWeave, with a portion earmarked to broaden commercial API access by the end of summer 2026. Total disclosed funding stands at $454m.

General Intuition was co-founded in 2025 by Pim de Witte, creator of gaming clip platform Medal, and researchers Eloi Alonso, Adam Jelley, and Vincent Micheli. Their prior work includes the DIAMOND diffusion world model, IRIS and Δ-IRIS world models, and GAIA-2 generative models for automated driving. The company focuses on action models, systems that generate optimal actions given observations of an environment rather than predicting how environments evolve, targeting gaming, simulation, and physical robotics. Training data flows from Medal, which operates under the same parent and whose 17 million+ monthly active users generate billions of action-labeled gameplay clips. A commercial API for gaming, simulation, and robotics partners has launched, with broader access planned by the end of summer 2026.

The $133.7m Seed round in Oct’25, which we covered at InvestGame, was led by Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst, with participation from The Raine Group, and ranked among the largest early-stage investments in AI gaming at the time of closing. The Series A followed three months later, based on research progress, with Khosla re-leading the round for the second consecutive time.

General Intuition’s raise completes a cluster of three $300m+ rounds in the world model and AI simulation category within months of each other, together representing the three largest AI and gaming infrastructure deals of the 2024-2026 period, alongside Decart’s $300m Series B at a ~$4B valuation and Odyssey‘s $310m Series B at $1.45B, both covered in recent digests. The three companies occupy distinct positions: Decart is focused on inference infrastructure and optimization across hardware platforms; Odyssey is focused on general world simulation with a physical AI and robotics angle; and General Intuition is focused on action models trained on proprietary gameplay data, with gaming as both a training ground and a commercial market. What distinguishes General Intuition is the data moat: while Decart and Odyssey rely on compute scale and research breadth, General Intuition’s access to billions of human gameplay decisions through Medal provides a training resource that is difficult to replicate.

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MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Italy-based PC & Console games developer 34BigThings has completed a management buyout from Embracer Group (STO: EMBRAC B), with founder Valerio Di Donato reacquiring 100% of the studio’s shares for an undisclosed sum. Di Donato leads the studio alongside co-founder and Head of Studio Giuseppe Enrico Franchi and CFO Daniel Giagnorio, who together form a three-member board of directors. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Torino, 34BigThings developed the racing game Redout and vehicular combat title Carmageddon: Rogue Shift under Embracer’s ownership, having been acquired through Saber Interactive in Nov’20. The studio intends to announce a major title built on an undisclosed IP later in 2026, with additional projects planned for 2027 and 2028. Having grown to more than 70 full-time employees over the Embracer period, 34BigThings now targets direct partnerships with global publishers and investors as an independent studio.

US-based AI company Gaxos.ai (NASDAQ: GXAI) has completed the sale of its gaming assets to Game Foundry AI, a privately held AI game development company, in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $1.76m. The divested assets include Gaxos’ mobile games portfolio and Gaxos Gaming Labs, a generative AI service for game developers and publishers. The agreement also includes Gaxos’s acquisition of 250,000 shares of Game Foundry AI common stock for $200k. The deal allows Gaxos to concentrate resources on its higher-margin AI business lines, including an AI-powered sales coaching platform for which Amazon Web Services has committed additional funding to accelerate development in collaboration with Caylent, an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, incorporating live call transcription, automated coaching intelligence, post-call analytics, and performance optimization tools. The divestiture marks the final step in Gaxos’ transformation from its former identity as NFT Gaming Company into a pure-play AI services firm, following a strategic pivot initiated in 2023.

VENTURE FINANCING

US-based online chess platform Chess.com has secured an undisclosed investment from CVC Capital Partners, with longstanding investor General Atlantic remaining a shareholder. Goldman Sachs served as the exclusive financial advisor to Chess.com. With more than 265 million members and 10 million daily active users, Chess.com operates as a fully remote organization of 650 employees, with member growth since General Atlantic’s initial growth investment in Jan’22 coinciding with rising mainstream chess interest following Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit and the expansion of chess content on streaming and social platforms. CVC’s Sports, Media & Entertainment practice has previously backed Formula 1, Italy’s football league Serie A, Six Nations Rugby, and the Women’s Tennis Association, positioning Chess.com within a broader portfolio of competitively structured entertainment properties with global audiences.

China-based AI 3D generation company Hyper3D has completed a new financing round for an undisclosed sum, reportedly in the hundreds of millions RMB, led by Cathay Capital and Shanghai Guotou Xiandao, with prior investors including ByteDance, Meituan Dragon Pearl, HongShan (formerly Sequoia China), and BlueRun Ventures following on. Hyper3D’s latest model, Rodin Gen-2.5, generates 3D meshes of up to 10 million polygon faces using Test-time Scaling. Following the Rodin Gen-2.5 launch, the monthly subscriber count and ARR both grew over 400% month-on-month. Enterprise clients include ByteDance, Unity, Figma, and Canva, with international revenue accounting for approximately 80% of total revenue. The proceeds will support the engineering team’s expansion, next-generation model development, and international market growth as Hyper3D competes in the growing AI 3D generation sector.

Israel-based AI mobile revenue operations platform Kinoa has raised $10m in a round led by Transcend Fund, with participation from Sisu Game Ventures. Kinoa’s platform processes mobile app user data to automate monetization decisions, including in-app offers, push notifications, and feature adjustments, without requiring engineering work from the operator. Co-founded by Elias Sandler, Hen Gelberg, and Roi Eyal, Kinoa’s platform spans over 300 product features across the mobile user lifecycle, with clients including Playstudios, Playsimple Games, and Modern Times Group.

Sweden-based music personalization platform Reactional Music has secured a $2.8m (€2.5m) grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC), with the EIC additionally committing up to $7.4m (€6.5m) in future equity to match incoming capital, bringing total potential EIC-backed funding to $10.2m (€9m). The funds will support commercial deployment of the platform, SDK optimization for game engines, and expansion of rights and royalty infrastructure. Reactional Music’s SDK integrates with Unreal Engine and Unity, streaming licensed music that changes in response to player actions.

South Korea-based Roblox UGC games developer Versework has raised $2.7m from Altos Ventures and has simultaneously been selected for the Roblox Incubator 2026, becoming the first Asian studio to join the program. The investment brings total funding to approximately $7.5m. Founded in 2021 by Young-Gun Yoon, Versework reported approximately $7.3m in revenue and positive operating income in 2025. Its flagship luck-based idle title, Sols RNG, has accumulated 2 billion cumulative plays.

US-based tabletop RPG audio platform Pocket Bard has disclosed a $67k raise, according to an SEC filing. The company’s mobile app supplies ambient music, sound effects, and environmental audio for tabletop RPG sessions across fantasy, sci-fi, and other genres, and has accumulated 750,000+ downloads.

FUNDRAISING

South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and South Korea-based PC & mobile games publisher Nexon (TSE: 3659) have launched the ~$78m (KRW 120B) ‘Kona Global IP Investment Fund,’ managed by gaming-specialized VC Kona Venture Partners. The fund comprises ~$39m (KRW 60B) from the Ministry, ~$38m (KRW 58.8B) from Nexon, and ~$785k (KRW 1.2B) from Kona Venture Partners. The fund will invest in Seed-to-Series A-stage game developers with global IP expansion potential, focusing on AI-era game technology and next-generation development talent. Nexon is additionally deploying ~$85m (KRW 130B) in direct follow-on capital as part of a broader ~$163m (KRW 250B), five-year early-stage ecosystem investment program. The initiative marks the Ministry’s first direct co-investment vehicle with a major domestic games publisher, reflecting a structural shift from grant-based industry support toward equity-aligned partnerships designed to scale Korean game IP in global markets.

US-based video games investment house DENMU has launched a $50m fund targeting AAA, AA, and indie games across all platforms, with plans to invest in 10 to 20 projects through 2028. Founded in 2025 by Ryan You and Michael Fan, DENMU’s team includes Blizzard North co-founder David Brevik and Top Hat Studios founder Joe Brown. Prior portfolio investments include the tactical RPG The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, the parkour action-adventure title MOTORSLICE, the first-person dungeon crawler Labyrinth of the Demon King, the MMORPG Blue Protocol: Star Resonance, and the mobile action RPG Bleach: Soul Resonance.

Israel-based gaming VC vgames has launched a $10m Indie Fund structured as project financing for premium PC & Console titles, with planned investments of $500k to $1m per studio across 10 to 20 projects in exchange for revenue share rather than equity. Founded in 2020, vgames manages $400m in assets across a portfolio of approximately 50 companies, including mobile casual games developer SuperPlay, PC & Console games developer 1047 Games, and mobile games developer Pocket Haven.

PUBLIC OFFERINGS

Canada-based ad-tech company Ionik Corporation (TSXV: INIK) has closed $100m in new credit facilities comprising an $80m senior term facility, a $10m revolving credit facility, and a $10m subordinated facility from ATB Financial. National Bank of Canada acted as co-lead arranger alongside ATB Financial and sole bookrunner for the senior tranches, with participation from ATB Financial Citibank Canada and Export Development Canada; Fort Capital Partners served as credit advisor. Concurrently, Ionik completed a reorganization of approximately $83.9m in acquisition-related debt through $25.8m in cash repayments, $32.2m converted into common shares, and maturity extensions on the remaining $25.8m to March 2030; the senior term facility matures Jun’29. Proceeds refinanced the existing syndicated credit facility, funded cash settlements, covered transaction fees, and provide additional working capital. Ionik operates a marketing technology platform combining media activation and marketing optimization through a proprietary AI data engine, serving brands, advertisers, and publishers.

Japan-based mobile games company Mynet (TSE: 3928) intends to raise ~$1.23m (JPY 198.6m) through a third-party allotment of 871,000 new ordinary shares to Japan-based sports business firm Zero Gaming at JPY 228 per share, with payment scheduled for Jul 13, 2026. Zero Gaming, led by CEO Deane Sadler and backed by the Virtus Athletica Fund, will hold a 9.09% post-issuance stake in Mynet. Net proceeds of ~$1.22m (JPY 196.6m) will fund ~$545k (JPY 88m) in Fantasy Sports product promotion and ~$668k (JPY 108m) in multi-sport app development, both through Dec’27; individual allocations are rounded to the nearest million yen per the filing. Mynet specializes in acquiring and operating existing mobile game titles in the Japanese market. The deal introduces sports as a new content vertical by combining Mynet’s mobile platform infrastructure with Zero Gaming’s sports-industry network. Post-issuance, major shareholders include founder Jin Uehara (12.97%), Zero Gaming (9.09%), SBI Securities (4.48%), Rakuten Securities (4.42%), and Sega (2.30%).