Today the Portuguese startup Replai, which uses AI-driven short-videos to engage sports fans, has raised €1.2 million in seed funding. The round was led by Bright Pixel, alongside Ideias Glaciares, Clever Advertising and other c-level business angels from Whatsapp, Playrix, Nekki, Aptoide, Dashdash and Unbabel. The funds will be used for business development, to grow the team, and expand internationally, with the UK and the US as priorities.
Founded in 2019 by João Costa and Francisco Pacheco, Replai automates the creation of short-videos, a buzzing trend within the e-sports sector. So how does it work exactly? Having tapped into the esports industry, Replai uses advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to automatically put together a set of highlights from any livestream competition, creating custom-made clips for each social network to maximize audiences and generating revenue for sponsors and advertisers.
“Forecasts show that esports will soon beat traditional sports. However, monetization is still far behind other fields such as mobile gaming – which is expected to top $100b in revenue by 2020, for example. So, our mission is to help esports companies profit from this paradigm shift. This round allowed us, above all, to gather a panel of experts in gaming and technology that will help us take the next step growth-wise as soon as possible”, say João Costa and Francisco Pacheco, founders of Replai.
“Replai stands out for their AI technology which enables automatic creation and distribution of short videos, this being a transversal need to any area that uses video as a communication method. Besides the innovative solution, Replai is founded by two young entrepreneurs with a proved record of user acquisition, strong technical know-how and the ambition to grow the business globally. This combination of factors was decisive and provides us confidence in consolidating Replai’s success”, explained Benjamin Júnior, co-founder and a member of the investment team at Bright Pixel.
Alexander Lubchenko, CMO at Nekki, commented: “Replai is providing a way to improve the value of gaming and esports as a mainstream entertainment platform and allows promoters, broadcasters and communities to grow. Their use of AI ensures scalability by solving a lot of pain points when using livestreams and video, while allowing content creation instantly at scale. I’m excited to partner with them on this journey.”
