Volley, a revenue leader in AI-powered games, announced today the closing of its Series C fundraising round at $55 million. The round was co-led by Microsoft’s M12 Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. General Catalyst, Causeway Media Partners, the Amazon Alexa Fund, BITKRAFT, Y Combinator, Boost VC, Alumni Ventures, Waverley, Gaingels, and Riverside also joined the latest round.
Volley is believed to be the highest-grossing AI-powered games company and the leading creator of voice-enabled games for Amazon Alexa, Fire TVs, Roku TVs, and mobile devices. And the company’s games are played by 5+ million people every month. Popular Volley games include Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, 20 Questions, and Question of the Day.
Volley’s voice AI games include Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, 20 Questions, and more. This year, Volley games have been played in over 30 million homes.
The games are available on smart speakers like Amazon Alexa and smart TVs including Roku and Fire TV. Each Volley game is controlled by talking to a microphone-enabled device like a smart TV voice remote, smartphone, or smart speaker. And the games feature an AI voice interface rather than traditional input mechanisms like touch screens or handheld game controllers – which makes them accessible to a broad audience of casual players. The company’s games are built on a proprietary stack integrating four evolving AI technologies: speech recognition, natural language processing, LLM-powered content generation, and speech synthesis.
The recent funding round will enable the company to further invest in creating advanced LLM-powered non-player characters and best-in-class speech recognition. In fact, in the last few weeks, we’ve seen the industry converge on Volley’s long-term view that speech is the best way for consumers to interact with artificial intelligence. And recent GPT-4o and Gemini demos show that leading AI research labs train large language models to directly support powerful voice interactions out-of-the-box.
KEY QUOTES:
“This latest funding round will accelerate our development of new voice-controlled, AI-powered games. Large language models and other emerging voice AI technologies are allowing us to create entirely new categories of games that weren’t previously possible. We’re thrilled to grow our portfolio of titles and reach new customers with the support of Microsoft and Lightspeed.”
- Max Child, CEO & Co-Founder of Volley
“At M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund, we seek companies innovating at the nexus of state-of-the-art AI technology and lively, entertainment-oriented experiences that are fun and engaging for everyone. We’re excited to partner with Volley as they extend their leadership in casual-format, AI-powered interactive voice games that can be delivered to their userbase of millions via the widest possible variety of devices, from smartphones to smart TVs.”
- Michael Stewart, Managing Partner at M12, who is joining the company’s board of directors
“We love partnering with extraordinary founders and have been fans and supporters of Max, James, and the team since 2018. At a time when most vertical applications in AI are still proving their business models with nascent revenue streams, Volley has built not only the undisputed market leader in AI voice games but—to our knowledge—also the highest-grossing AI-powered gaming startup.”
- Statement from Lightspeed Venture Partners
