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 · Seed · Oct 2016

Tovala makes a connected countertop oven paired with a meal subscription and pre-made trays that cook via barcode scanning and app-driven recipes. The company sells ovens (typically $299 with promotional discounts) and a curated meal service and also supports full-size LG ovens through a software deal. It plans to use new funding to open a second distribution facility, most likely in Utah, to better serve the western U.S., and to invest in customer service and hiring. Tovala is expanding meal options via partnerships with restaurants and chefs to offer pre-made meals for its oven. Operating metrics disclosed include tenfold annualized revenue growth over the past 18 months, a 40% increase in employee headcount year-over-year, over 3 million meals shipped, and ovens being used an average of 32 times per month by owners. The company was incubated at Y Combinator and is based in Chicago. Tovala sells a smart convection/broiling/steaming oven paired with ready-to-cook meal kits that are pre-chopped and pre-sauced; customers scan QR codes in the Tovala app and the oven finishes cooking automatically. The oven can also be used as a conventional oven and is pre-programmed with profiles for roughly 750 other ready-meals. The standalone oven retails for $299 or $199 with a six-meal commitment, and single-serving meals currently sell for $11.99. The company launched its service in 2017 and reports it has sold over 1 million meals to customers since then, with dramatic growth in the past 10 months that Rabie attributes in part to COVID-19. Tovala was incubated at Y Combinator and is based in Chicago. The company has pursued partnerships (e.g., an LG distribution partnership) and occasional chef pop-ups, and has discussed potential collaborations with food industry investors like Tyson and others. Tovala builds a steam-based countertop oven sold alongside a subscription meal-kit service and smartphone app that lets users cook meals at the touch of a button. The oven retails for $399, with discounts that cut the price to $199 when customers buy 24 Tovala meals or knock $100 off with a four-meal purchase. CEO David Rabie has described the company’s vision as a “Netflix of food,” and Tovala is pursuing broader partnerships to expand its meal offerings. The company is Chicago-based and was cofounded by Rabie and engineer Brian Wilcox; it graduated from Y Combinator in 2016. Financially, Tovala raised a $9.2 million funding round led by Origin Ventures late last year and has taken an additional, undisclosed investment from Tyson Ventures tied to a partnership to develop Tyson-branded Tovala meals. Tovala makes $399 ‘smart’ steam ovens and a companion meal service that cooks in the device. The oven can be operated remotely via an app and is said to bake, boil and steam meals at up to 550°F in 10–30 minutes. It works with both prepackaged Tovala meals and customers’ own food. The company views its meal delivery/subscription service as the primary revenue driver. Tovala recently raised $9.2 million in fresh funding, bringing its total funding to $11.5 million. The startup went through Y Combinator last winter and faces a crowded, competitive meal-kit and appliance market. Tovala sells a connected oven paired with a subscription-like marketplace that delivers fresh, oven-ready meals; each meal contains a barcode that instructs the oven to pull the recipe from the cloud and cook accordingly. Founded by David Rabie and Bryan Wilcox, the company ran a Kickstarter that has pledged more than $255,000 and spurred approximately 1,000 oven purchases. By December the company planned to ship nearly 700 units, with the remainder expected to be distributed in March and general sales opening March 1. The oven’s estimated retail price is $329. Tovala raised $1.6 million in a recent funding round to accelerate oven delivery and support the public launch. Including a prior $500,000 pre-seed round, also led by Origin Ventures, the company has more than $2.1 million in total funding.