Led · Equity · Dec 2025

OpenAI develops advanced artificial intelligence products, including ChatGPT and APIs for developers. The company is establishing The Deployment Company via a strategic alliance with private-equity partners to drive deeper enterprise integration of its AI tools. OpenAI will retain majority control of the joint venture, which is capitalized with more than $4.0 billion from investors and valued at about $10.0 billion. The initiative emphasizes embedding "forward-deployed engineers" inside client organizations to tailor and implement solutions. Target industries for deployment include financial services, health care, manufacturing and logistics. The move is part of a broader shift toward monetization and scaling enterprise adoption as OpenAI and peers consider potential IPOs, and it follows an internal leadership shift assigning Brad Lightcap to oversee related market-facing projects.

Led · Equity · Feb 2024

Epic Games is the maker of Fortnite and the Unreal Engine, and has expanded Fortnite into a hub of user-generated game modes and brand collaborations. The company is broadening its scope with standalone titles like Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing and Fortnite Festival and operates a lucrative in-game store for skins and digital goods. Epic will use Unreal Engine and its online social gaming infrastructure to build an “all-new games and entertainment universe” in partnership with Disney. The collaboration will bring characters and storylines from Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and others into interoperable experiences tied to Fortnite. Disney’s $1.5 billion equity stake accompanies the partnership and signals a major strategic entry into games for Disney. The project aims to let players “play, watch, shop and engage” and is described as persistent, open and interoperable, with a release timeframe described as “soon(ish).” Epic Games is best known as the maker of Fortnite and as a platform for social, interactive entertainment. The company is partnering with Lego to build a kid-focused metaverse and says the product will prioritize child safety, privacy, and tools that give users control. Epic frames the planned digital experiences as family-friendly spaces that empower children to be creators and explore connections between digital and physical worlds. The company announced a $2 billion capital infusion to accelerate those efforts and support continued growth. Epic emphasized three safety principles for the project: prioritizing children’s well-being, safeguarding privacy, and equipping users with control over their digital experience. There is no timeline or detailed product description yet for the proposed virtual world. Epic Games is best known for the blockbuster Fortnite and also provides core developer tools such as the Unreal Engine, Epic Online Services, and the Epic Games Store. The company says it is focused on building connected social experiences across Fortnite, Rocket League and Fall Guys and on empowering game developers and creators. Epic has been using its cash to acquire studios, including the March acquisition of Mediatonic, maker of Fall Guys. Management, led by controlling shareholder and CEO Tim Sweeney, frames the company’s work as part of a broader Metaverse strategy. Epic has an ongoing legal battle with Apple and Google over in-game payment revenues that has been consuming company attention. The company’s latest fundraise values it at an equity valuation of $28.7 billion. Epic Games operates Fortnite, one of the world’s largest games with over 350 million accounts and 2.5 billion friend connections, and develops Unreal Engine, which is used across games and industries such as film, architecture, automotive, and simulation. Through Unreal Engine, Epic Games Store, and Epic Online Services it provides an end-to-end digital ecosystem for developers and creators to build, distribute, and operate games and other content. The company has over 40 offices worldwide with headquarters in Cary, North Carolina and was founded in 1991. Epic announced a $1.78 billion funding round consisting of primary capital and secondary purchases from employee equity holders, and its post-money equity valuation is $17.3 billion. Investors named in the round include Sony (a previously announced $250 million strategic investment), Baillie Gifford, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Lightspeed Venture Partners, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, David Tepper, and existing investors KKR and Smash Ventures. Epic said the financing will accelerate its efforts to build a new kind of digital ecosystem using real-time 3D technology, services that connect hundreds of millions of people, and a digital storefront offering a fair business model; the company will remain controlled by founder and CEO Tim Sweeney and retain a single class of common stock. Epic Games is the creator of Fortnite and the long-running Unreal game development engine. The company has historically released free-to-play games as a loss leader to showcase its Unreal toolkit. Fortnite’s massive success has allowed Epic to reduce Unreal Engine prices while continuing to upgrade the technology. Epic recently raised $1.25 billion in a new round of financing and has been reinvesting cash into the community, including a $100 million commitment to Fortnite esports competitions. The company’s cultural impact includes dance crazes, merchandise tie-ins, and broader mainstream attention. Tim Sweeney remains in control of the company while new investors have joined its cap table.

Participated · Series B · Jun 2023

Red 6 develops outdoor-capable augmented reality systems for synthetic training, notably ATARS (Advanced Tactical Augmented Reality System) and ARCADE (Augmented Reality Command and Analytic Data Environment). ATARS is a multi-node, all-domain AR system that creates a complete outdoor synthetic training environment for multiple users, enabling pilots to experience the cognitive loads of real flight while using scalable simulated training. ARCADE defines, builds, briefs, and debriefs training environments and combines biometrics, flight data, and user inputs to improve post-flight replay and analysis. The company says its technology aims to address U.S. and allied military pilot shortages and reduce the resource burden of training by making preparation quicker, cheaper, safer, and cleaner. Red 6 is led by founder and CEO Daniel Robinson and is based in Orlando, FL. The company intends to use the new funding to continue investing in the proprietary technology that supports ATARS. Red 6 develops the Airborne Tactical Augmented Reality System (ATARS), a wide field-of-view, full-color AR solution proven to work outdoors in dynamic, high-speed environments. ATARS enables pilots and ground operators to see synthetic threats and virtual and constructive assets in real time. The company plans to use the new funding to continue expanding operations and broaden its business reach. Red 6 closed a $30M Series A at a $130M post-money valuation. The company was founded in 2018 by Daniel Robinson, Glenn Snyder and Nick Bicanic and is based in Santa Monica, California. The article does not disclose revenue or user metrics. Red 6 is a Santa Monica-based company developing augmented reality air combat training systems. Its core products include the Airborne Tactical Augmented Reality System (ATARS) and the Combined Augmented Reality Battlespace Operational Network (CARBON). The company is led by founder and CEO Daniel Robinson. Red 6 announced it raised $7M in a funding round. The financing was arranged as a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) and will fund continued development of ATARS and CARBON. Investors in the round include Red Cell, Snowpoint Ventures, Octave, Moonshots Capital, Irongate, TR Aeroventures, and Marlinspike. Red 6 develops ATARS (Airborne Tactical Augmented Reality System), which lets real pilots in real aircraft fly and visually maneuver against synthetically generated enemies in real time. The company focuses on synthetic training for military aviation and has worked with the U.S. Air Force through AFWERX for the past two years. Red 6 intends to accelerate development and commercialization of ATARS using recent funding. The firm received a strategic investment from Lockheed Martin Ventures; the amount was not disclosed. Previous investors include Moonshots Capital, Starburst Accelerator and Irongate Capital Partners. Founded in 2018 and based in Santa Monica, Calif., Red 6 positions its technology for operational training use.

Participated · Equity · Apr 2022

Inworld AI builds a Character Engine that powers AI-driven non-player characters (NPCs) for games, entertainment, and interactive experiences. The platform orchestrates multiple machine learning models to produce multimodal character expression—dialogue, memory, goals, emotional intelligence—and can link character 'brains' to animation and rigging in 3D engines. Inworld’s technology is integrated with major game engines and marketplaces, including Unity's AI Marketplace as a Unity Verified Solution and work with Unreal Engine MetaHumans; the company also received an Epic MegaGrant. Customers and partners include Team Miaozi (NetEase Games), Niantic 8th Wall, ILM Immersive, LG UPlus, Alpine Electronics, and community-created mods for Skyrim, Stardew Valley, and Grand Theft Auto V. The company plans to use new funding to accelerate research and development, hire top talent, invest in infrastructure, and launch an open-source version of its Character Engine. Inworld says its approach goes beyond standard LLM chatbots to create lifelike NPC behaviors that can autonomously pursue goals and interact within game worlds. Founded in 2021, Inworld has raised over $100 million to date and its recent financing values the company at more than $500 million. Inworld AI offers a no-code creative suite for building AI characters and interactive digital humans. The company layers advanced generative AI on top of MetaHumans to create personalities, thoughts, memories, and behaviors designed to mimic social human interaction. Its technology powers conversations, emotions, expressions, and gestures, and characters can be designed in minutes and deployed into gaming, entertainment, education, metaverse, or brand experiences. Inworld received an Epic MegaGrant from Epic Games to combine its AI solutions with Epic’s MetaHuman technology and enable integration into Unreal Engine experiences. CEO Ilya Gelfenbeyn said the company is honored to receive the MegaGrant and is excited to help developers add interactive digital humans. The article does not disclose revenue, users, or other financial metrics. Inworld AI builds AI-powered virtual characters primarily for games and broader entertainment and marketing campaigns. The company offers a platform and integrations with engines like Unreal Engine and Unity to create NPCs and digital representatives with memories, personalities and human-like behaviors. Customers describe characters in natural language and tailor goals, speech patterns, knowledge and voice; characters undergo a training process and query Inworld's cloud-hosted system for dialogue. Inworld launched in 2021, released its first product after a March seed round and is currently in limited beta while exploring pricing and cost-reduction strategies. The company has 42 employees, added chief creative officer John Gaeta, and was selected for the 2022 Disney Accelerator. Proceeds from fundraising are earmarked for product development, research, hiring and customer acquisition as it seeks partners to deploy AI characters beyond gaming. Inworld AI offers a Studio product and beta tools that let developers create richly detailed, conversational NPCs using natural-language core descriptions and configurable character fields with no code. The system runs online and queries large language models to produce unscripted dialogue, while leaving visuals to external art pipelines and integrating with game engines like Unreal and Unity. Characters can be given motivations, personality traits, world knowledge, rote responses, blacklists, and standard safety filters to bias behavior and constrain outputs. In demos the generated characters produced natural-feeling, game-relevant responses, though the company and reviewer noted the demonstrations were limited and staged. Inworld plans to publish a short game to showcase its character generators and is running a private beta with early access applications. The company recently raised $10 million (and counting) from a group of angel investors including Riot Games, The Sandbox, Roblox, Disney, Animoca Brands, Twitch and Oculus. Inworld AI provides a developer platform for creating AI-powered virtual human agents that populate metaverses, VR/AR experiences, games, and other virtual worlds. Its AI enables virtual agents to exhibit unique behaviors and awareness of their context and environment, and agents are embeddable and deployable across a range of immersive realities. The platform is positioned to let brands create virtual representatives for ecommerce, operations, and customer support, and to help enterprises run immersive training and video-game makers build realistic NPCs. The company emphasizes in-world roles such as advising, support, entertainment, and other intended functions. Inworld AI is co-founded by CEO Ilya Gelfenbeyn and CTO Michael Ermolenko and is based in Mountain View, Calif. The company raised a $7M seed round, which represents its current disclosed financing event.

Participated · Series A · May 2019

Tyffon builds and operates high-end “free roam” VR location-based experiences (Tyffoniums) that combine VR technology and multi-sensory effects in physical environments for social, free-roam play. The company has developed three experiences for its Tyffoniums: Corridor (mixed reality horror), Fluctus (mixed reality fantasy ride), and Tarot VR: Voyage of Reverie (22 mixed reality experiences). Tyffon is developing additional hyper-realistic, character-driven immersive content, including experiences based on major media and entertainment franchises. It currently operates two Tyffoniums in Tokyo (Odaiba and Shibuya) and plans to open a third Tokyo venue and its first U.S. Tyffonium in Los Angeles later this year. Tyffon, led by CEO Ken Fukazawa, is a graduate of the Disney Accelerator. Financially, the company has raised more than $12M to date following a new Series A tranche. Tyffon develops and operates hyper-realistic Tyffonium location-based experiences that combine virtual reality technology and multi-sensory effects in physical environments that allow guests to roam freely and interact socially. Its first two Tyffonium experiences are Corridor, a mixed-reality horror experience, and Fluctus, a mixed-reality fantasy ride on a floating ship; Tyffon is developing additional hyper-realistic and character-driven content. The company operates its first Tyffonium in Odaiba, Tokyo and plans to open a second in Shibuya in November. Tyffon intends to expand its venues to the U.S., with its first U.S. location planned for Los Angeles, and will use new funds to expand its U.S.-based team. The company said it will work with U.S. media and entertainment companies to bring brands, content, characters and intellectual property to life within its experiences. Tyffon is based in Santa Monica, California, and is a graduate of the Disney Accelerator powered by Techstars.