Posted in: Games, Indie Games, Video Games | Tagged: Echo Chess, Echo Chunk

Echo Chess Raises $1.4 Million In Pre-Seed Funding

Echo Chunk announced that they have raised $1.4m in pre-seed funding, as they look to make more titles following the success of Echo Chess.

Published Tue, 16 Jul 2024 09:12:08 -0500

by Gavin Sheehan

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Article Summary

Echo Chunk lands $1.4m in pre-seed funding for its game Echo Chess.
Investors include a16z, Zynga's Mark Pincus, and AI experts.
Founder Sami Ramly aims to innovate in games starting with chess.
Funds to enhance Echo Chess and develop new gaming titles.

Echo Chunk, the company behind the free-to-play online daily puzzle game Echo Chess, announced today they have raised $1.4m in pre-seed funding. In case you haven't played it yet, Echo Chess sets up a daily puzzle where you play as one color of the two sides, attempting to use chess moves to take out all of the other pieces on the board. Every move turns you into a new piece, so you'll have to devise a strategy based on what you need to solve it in the fewest moves. While the company didn't go into specifics, it would appear the funding will be used to build on the title and focus on the company's next title. We have more info from the press release this morning for you here.

Echo Chess Raises $1.4 Million In Pre-Seed Funding — Credit: Echo Chunk

Echo Chess Pre-Seed

After Echo Chess gained wildfire popularity among players, puzzle gamers, and mainstream audiences alike, top investors in the technology and games industry were excited to participate in Echo Chunk's recent pre-seed round, including a16z Speedrun by Andreessen Horowitz; Mark Pincus, Founder and Chairman of Zynga; South Park Commons (SPC); Eric Wu, Founder and CEO of Opendoor; Stef Corazza, Head of Generative AI at Roblox and former-Founder of Mixamo; AJ Apte, CEO of Snapser and former-CTO of FarmVille mobile; Patrick Wyatt, Founder of ArenaNet (Guild Wars) and early Blizzard VP (Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo); Joon Park, AI researcher and lead author of Stanford Generative Agents; Albert Lai, Founder and CEO of Kontagent; Founders You Should Know (FYSK); and David King, early Googler and angel investor in Quora.

With a strong background in tech and machine learning and having led teams at tech and entertainment startups, Echo Chunk Founder Sami Ramly, a Stanford-trained lifelong strategy gamer, began noticing a stagnation in the ingenuity of novel games, with remasters and repetitive sequels crowding the market supply. So he set out to make his own by re-inventing the mechanics of chess, a game he first learned when he was three years old.

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