USA – PortalOne, a Palo Alto, CA- and Oslo, Norway-based hybrid games platform, raised $15m in seed funding.
Backers included Founders Fund, TQ Ventures, Coatue Management, Rogue Ventures, Signia Venture Partners, Seedcamp , Talis Capital and SNÖ Ventures, strategic partners Atari and ARRI, and angel investors Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch; Mike Morhaime, co-founder of Blizzard and Dreamhaven; Amy Morhaime, co-founder of Dreamhaven; Marc Merrill, co-founder of Riot Games; Xen Lategan, former CTO and executive advisor at various companies such as Hulu, and Eugene Wei, former Head of Video at Oculus and Head of Product at Hulu. Founded in 2018 by brothers Stig Olav Kasin and Bård Anders Kasin, PortalOne provides a hybrid games platform, launching a whole new category of entertainment that mixes games with live shows that are embedded directly inside the games. The first format on the platform is PortalOne Arcade, a retro-inspired universe that immerses the show’s guests inside original PortalOne games, as well as contemporary and “super-sized” classic games that enable users to compete directly against these guests right from their mobile phones. The company has already secured exclusive global distribution rights for seven years with Atari, and ARRI, the global market leader in camera and lighting technology. PortalOne opened its beta in June 2020 and aims to fully launch in the US later this year. 29/04/2021
