LinQ secures $2.3 million in seed funding to propel real-money gaming

Dublin-based fintech company LinQ has successfully raised $2.3 million in a seed funding round to support mobile game publishers venturing into the real-money gaming sector. It brings the company’s total funding to $3.8 million, following a pre-seed investment of $1.5 million at the end of 2023.

The seed funding round saw participation from prominent investors including Drive by DraftKings, Sharp Alpha Advisors, MiddleGame Ventures, and a16z Speedrun. With this fresh injection of capital, LinQ aims to enhance its suite of services designed to streamline the entry of mobile publishers into the real-money gaming market. These services encompass publishing, operations, matchmaking, compliance, and native payments, enabling LinQ to publish real-money titles within just four weeks of securing a deal.

LinQ was established in 2023 by Dmitry Vysotski, co-founder of e-commerce measurement company Profitero, and Kevin Cubitt, founder of Crea8ive. Both founders bring a wealth of experience and a visionary approach to the fintech and gaming industries. Vysotski articulated the company’s mission in a LinkedIn post, expressing his belief in the transformative potential of user-generated content (UGC) payments and peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers-as-a-service. He envisions these elements as foundational to creating real-life economies within games, potentially surpassing the impact of the free-to-play model.

“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,” said Vysotski. This ambitious vision is shared by co-founder Cubitt, who highlighted the current challenges faced by mobile gaming. He noted that many previously successful games are struggling to maintain net-positive unit economics, making real-money gaming (RMG) a standout growth category. According to Cubitt, LinQ is uniquely positioned to provide a swift and effective solution for top game developers to enter the RMG market.

With the new funding, LinQ is poised to accelerate its mission of integrating real-money economies into mobile games, offering a comprehensive and scalable solution for publishers and developers worldwide. As the gaming industry continues to evolve, LinQ’s innovative approach and robust infrastructure promise to shape the future of real-money gaming, providing new opportunities for growth and engagement in the mobile gaming ecosystem.