Inworld AI raises $10M to develop AI- powered virtual characters for games

Inworld AI today announced it has raised $10 million in funding. It plans to use the investment to expand its team. The company plans to launch its creator platform later this year, which will offer integrations with game engines and metaverse application.

Bitkraft Ventures led the round, with participation from The Venture Reality Fund. Its other angel investors include Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu, Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell, and others.

Ilya Gelfenbeyn, Inworld AI CEO, said in a statement, “Similar to how Unity and Unreal allow developers to create visually compelling environments, the Inworld AI platform is designed to help build virtual characters with high configurability to create a more engaging and memorable user experience. With the backing of the most high-profile investors in the space, we will be able to enable developers and creators to leverage our platform to build and deploy virtual characters that enhance immersive and interactive virtual worlds.”

Moritz Baier-Lentz, partner at Bitkraft, added, “Over the next decade, we expect to see the creation of virtual environments of unprecedented scale and connectedness. But these worlds will feel empty without the right content, and bringing them to life with meaningful social interactions is challenging — unless developers can rely on the benefits of AI and procedural generation to create the engaging characters that populate them. Getting this right is a daunting task, and we had been looking for the right team to take on this important challenge for a long time. Inworld’s experience, skills, and pace of execution are second to none, and we couldn’t be more excited to partner up.”