LinQ raises $3.8m to bring real-money mechanics to mobile games

LinQ, an infrastructure provider to the real-money gaming industry, today announced a $2.3m raise with participation from Drive by DraftKings, Sharp Alpha Advisors, MiddleGame Ventures, and a16z Games Speedrun. This extends the $1.5m pre-seed round announced in late 2023, bringing total capital to $3.8m.

At its core, LinQ provides a seamless tech stack that enables mobile game developers to add real-money gaming capability to games, thus unlocking a variety of new monetization opportunities. LinQ already counts leading mobile publishers like Azur Games and Mamboo/My.Games as strategic partners.

LinQ believes its platform can help publishers develop and launch games sustainably. 

"Mobile gaming faces challenges, with many once-successful games struggling to maintain net-positive unit economics. While real-money gaming 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," said co-founder Kevin Cubitt. 

BettingStartups.com caught up with Lloyd Danzig, Managing Partner of Sharp Alpha Advisors, to get his perspective as a lead investor in the new round. 

What is the most compelling aspect of Linq's opportunity from your perspective? 

LinQ's founding team are highly technical, product-first founders providing fintech infrastructure to the world's largest game publishers who demand both speed and flexibility. Working alongside world class game developers, the LinQ SDK was wrought in a crucible of market demand and commercial opportunity. Kevin and Dmitry have developed new features that we think will become table stakes for the industry in the not-too-distant future. They also understand and are building around the power of liquidity to drive market share. 

This investment isn't the first that Sharp Alpha has made in RMG infrastructure, with prior investments in companies like Sharp Sports. What is your assessment on the strength of current RMG infra, and do you see opportunities for startups to develop further infra? 

Most consumers and investors don't realize the extent to which antiquated infrastructure compromises the user experience and gross margins in the real money gaming space. Despite modernization and vertical integration post-PASPA, the industry is riddled with technical debt that likely exceeds any other industry of similar size and growth profile. Though it often takes time for innovative first principles approaches to replace legacy infrastructure, that replacement is usually permanent. We continue to be excited by conversations we have every week with passionate entrepreneurs who are finding unique angles of attack to problems in big markets.

This is the first announced funding since Sharp Alpha Fund II was announced last month. How aggressively do you expect to deploy capital in 2024 H2? 

The timing of our announcements is not necessarily correlated to the timing of our investments. We trust the founders we back to orchestrate a PR calendar that is most advantageous to their business. In fact, we have made announcements over 12 months ago that still have not been announced and do not appear on our website. We are aggressively deploying capital this year, making much larger and more concentrated bets than in Fund I.

To hear more about the launch of Sharp Alpha Fund II, check out episode 113 of The Betting Startups Podcast featuring Lloyd Danzig on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.