Fintech platform LinQ has secured $2.3m in seed funding to help mobile publishers enter the real-money gaming (RMG) sector.
The funding round follows a $1.5m pre-seed investment at the end of 2023, bringing the company’s total funding to $3.8m.
The latest round saw participation from prominent gambling industry VCs including Drive by DraftKings, Sharp Alpha Advisors, MiddleGame Ventures, and A16Z Speedrun.
LinQ offers a range of services to partners including publishing, operations, matchmaking, compliance, and native payments, claiming that it can publish real-money titles within four weeks of a deal.
Founded in 2023 by Dmitry Vysotski (pictured left), co-founder of e-commerce measurement company Profitero, and Kevin Cubitt, founder of asset-backed structured finance provider Crea8ive, LinQ operates in 12 countries and has strategic partnerships with Azur Games and My.Games-owned Mamboo.
Growing RMG sector
“Mobile gaming faces challenges, with many once-successful games struggling to maintain net-positive unit economics,” said Cubitt.
“While RMG stands out as the only growing category, there is currently no other working solution for top game developers to enter it quickly, except LinQ.
“We can provide all the tools and the legal support they require,” he added.
Vysotski added: “Our mission is to enable real-life economies in games — with money, assets, transactions, and marketplaces.
“We believe that our infrastructure offers the building blocks for a new wave that could be even bigger than free-to-play.”
Elsewhere, Sharp Alpha managing partner Lloyd Danzig explained the rationale for his firm’s investment:
“The largest gaming publishers in the world are racing to launch new monetisation features but are often hamstrung by complicated, location-specific compliance requirements that are expensive and complicated to adhere to.
“LinQ provides a turnkey, enterprise-quality, full-stack fintech solution so developers can focus on making great games and retaining customers,” said Danzig.
He believes that LinQ is uniquely positioned to help “this portion of the competitive entertainment ecosystem reach its full potential.”
