Portuguese start-up Replai, using a series of brief AI-driven videos aimed at sports fans, has managed to raise €1.2 million in a round of seed funding. The round included c level business angels from Whatsapp, Playrix, Nekki, Aptoide, Dashdash & Unbabel, in partnership with Ideias Glaciares and Clever Advertising. The funds raised are to be ploughed into business development, and extension of the team and international reach, prioritising the USA and United Kingdom.
Replai, founded in 2019 by João Costa and Francisco Pacheco, has established themselves as specialists in the automated creation of short films, a recent craze in the sports industry. How do they do it? Employing sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms, Replai is able to automatically extract and compile match highlights from any live streamed event in the esports industry into social network-specific customised clips for use by sponsors and marketers to generate revenue.
João Costa and Francisco Pacheco, founders of Replai says: “Forecasts show that esports will soon beat traditional sports. However, monetization is still far behind other fields such as mobile gaming – which is expected to top $ 100b in revenue by 2020, for example. So, our mission is to help esports companies profit from this paradigm shift. This round allowed us, above all, to gather a panel of experts in gaming and technology that will help us take the next step growth-wise as soon as possible.”
Benjamin Júnior, co-founder and a member of the investment team at Bright Pixel explained: “Replai stands out for their AI technology which enables automatic creation and distribution of short videos, this being a transversal need to any area that uses video as a communication method. Besides the innovative solution, Replai is founded by two young entrepreneurs with a proven record of user acquisition, strong technical know-how and the ambition to grow the business globally. This combination of factors was decisive and provides us confidence in consolidating Replai’s success”,
Alexander Lubchenko, CMO at Nekki, added the following comment: “Replai is providing a way to improve the value of gaming and esports as a mainstream entertainment platform and allows promoters, broadcasters and communities to grow. Their use of AI ensures scalability by solving a lot of pain points when using livestreams and video, while allowing content creation instantly at scale. I’m excited to partner with them on this journey.”
