ArenaX Labs raises $6M to develop AI-powered games

ArenaX Labs, the studio behind AI Arena, announced today that it has raised $6 million in its latest round of funding. It plans to put this funding to use in building out the PvP platform fighter as well as developing similar titles. The company’s core mission, according to its founders, is to use gaming as a way of educating players on how to understand and work with AI.

AI Arena allows users to train their own AI-powered character to fight their battles, with the outcome of each fight determined by the player’s skill at said training. The game, which is planned for a beta launch early this year, will be free-to-play and run in browsers. ArenaX also plans for a web3 version for users to compete for rewards. However, the point of the title is more to help users understand how AI functions and learns.

“I think democratization is that the core of what we do,” Wei Xie, co-founder of ArenaX Labs, told GamesBeat in an interview. “Our thesis is that AI is going to be a massive technology of our time. The reality is that there are not a lot of people in the world that truly understand this technology. The entry point for most people is ChatGPT or Midjourney. That’s just an interface. Just because you can prompt an engine doesn’t mean you understand AI. What we’re doing is education and delivery of a true understanding and appreciation of AI through a very engaging medium of gaming.”

Framework Ventures led the round, with SevenX Ventures, FunPlus / Xterio and Moore Strategic Ventures participating. Framework co-founder Michael Anderson said in a statement, “At this stage, most consumers still view AI as a sort of novelty they may engage with on a very surface level. The ArenaX team is flipping this narrative by creating products that encourage normal people to actually interface with and begin learning to train AI through the language of play.”

Brandon de Silva, ArenaX’s CEO and co-founder, added to GamesBeat that an important factor in AI Arena and ArenaX is ownership of one’s own AI and having something to show for one’s skill with the technology. “One of the reasons we built the company was to give people who are really good at AI an opportunity to monetize their talent they might not otherwise have… This will give so many great opportunities to researchers because they can build models and prove they’re better than others, because our game is a competition.”

AI Arena is currently open for pre-registration, and ArenaX Labs plans to launch the game in beta on the Arbitrum mainnet sometime soon.