Seattle-based Arkero closed a $6 million pre-seed round led by Game Changers Ventures, with backing from 776, BoxGroup, and Founders’ Co-op.
Led by CEO Shivaas Gulati (co-founder of Remitly), Arkero builds an “AI executive partner” for pro sports teams. The platform automates matchday logistics and fan engagement by layering onto existing CRMs, ticketing, and Slack, rather than replacing them.
Most sports organizations suffer from fragmented legacy workflows. Arkero addresses this with unified predictive intelligence, a shift mirroring trends in predictive mapping and proprietary data licensing. By turning back-office friction into growth, early partners like the Seattle Sounders report 50% coordination efficiency gains.
Market Signal
- Operator-Founder Fit: Gulati’s team scaled Remitly to an $8B IPO; their “overlay” strategy minimizes friction in the risk-averse, $500B sports sector.
- Operational Memory: Arkero creates a unified data layer across silos, transforming sports clubs from manual, Excel-heavy entities into autonomous organizations.
- Efficiency Alpha: A 50% gain in matchday planning validates “Sports Ops” as a massive untapped vertical for specialized AI infrastructure.
Key Details
- Funding: $6M Pre-Seed
- Lead Investor: Game Changers Ventures
- CEO: Shivaas Gulati
- Use Case: AI-driven sports ops and matchday automation
