Artificial intelligence continues to embed itself deeper into the gaming industry, a sector historically pivotal to the rise of GPU chips in the 1990s. Now, startup Sett, a Tel Aviv-based technology company that develops AI-powered agents to help build and market mobile games, is stepping out of stealth mode after securing an impressive $27 million in funding.
Sett’s funding was gathered across two rounds. The latest was a $15 million Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners, joined by Saga VC, Vgames, and Akin Babayigit, the founder and former executive of gaming unicorn Tripledot who now leads Arcadia Gaming Advisors. Previously, the company raised a seed round of $12 million from investors including F2, Bessemer, and several angel investors embedded in the gaming industry.
Emerging after two years in stealth mode, Sett quietly built momentum by establishing solid ties and refining its product, already listing leading studios among its clients: Zynga, Scopely, Playtika, SuperPlay, Rovio, Plarium, Unity, and Candivore. Despite launching a website five months ago, Sett remains conservative in its marketing efforts, reporting more than 100 gaming studios waiting to onboard. The fresh infusion of capital will primarily be dedicated to expanding its engineering and AI development teams.
Sett’s founders, CEO Amit Carmi and CTO Yoni Blumenfeld, pinpoint one of the largest hurdles in the fiercely competitive mobile gaming market—attracting user attention. Carmi stresses that creating games is relatively straightforward, but success is extremely rare, citing staggering competition where the number of new titles vastly outstrips the available audience. Consequently, game developers pour significant resources into user acquisition strategies, investing around $29 billion collectively for approximately $100 billion in revenue, according to market research.
Under Apple’s tighter privacy rules on iOS, precise user-tracking capabilities are severely limited, placing greater value on creative marketing content that captures user engagement. Sett’s AI agents streamline the production of “playable” advertisements—interactive game previews designed to entice downloads or increase engagement—significantly reducing development costs and speeding up production. According to the company, this approach enables production to occur 15 times faster and 25 times cheaper than conventional methods.
Sett’s investor and advisor, Babayigit, highlights the simplicity of the company’s value proposition, praising the founders and their technology as exceptional assets. The approach mirrors strategies employed by AppLovin, a leader in mobile game marketing. Interestingly, AppLovin itself recently agreed to sell its gaming studio assets to Tripledot for $800 million. These were originally created to train the very AI models AppLovin now extensively employs across its advertising solutions—which confirms the viability and demand for such technology-driven marketing tools.
Carmi acknowledges that AI’s role in gaming could eventually extend end-to-end through the complete development and marketing cycle, though Sett is cautious about such ambitions, currently focusing more narrowly on in-game and marketing content. “We built our game engine and the AI agent architecture to eventually generate code and integrate directly into games, but our immediate vision focuses squarely on enhancing marketing and in-game experiences,” Carmi stated.
Despite AI’s expanding potential to automate numerous aspects of game development and user acquisition, Babayigit expressed scepticism about a completely autonomous AI game production cycle, noting the extremely high competition and demand for finely tuned, detail-oriented experiences. Still, he is confident that Sett’s capabilities could significantly automate key processes within game marketing and production, a bold move that may further redefine the gaming landscape in years to come.
