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- This week: Packz raises $10.7M for trading card platform
This week: Packz raises $10.7M for trading card platform
Also: Pumpcade raises $1M pre-seed for faster, data-verified prediction market, and i3Soft founder on how he plans to win back online poker’s casual players.
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Packz raises $10.7M from Sharp Alpha, DraftKings execs for trading card platform
The news: Packz, a gamified collectibles platform where users open digital packs and receive physical trading cards, has raised $10.7M in total funding. Backers include Makers Fund, The Raine Group, Courtside Ventures, Sharp Alpha Advisors, RiverPark Ventures, and executives at DraftKings. The New York-based startup launched in September 2025 and says it processed roughly $8.1M in packs opened last month (up 76% month-over-month), CEO and co-founder Rahul Khatti said on LinkedIn.
Zoom in: Packz allows users to open a range of sports and Pokémon card packs ranging from $25 to $2,500 for rarer variants (think: hall of fame cards, holographics, etc). Once opened, users can have physical graded cards shipped to them, or cash out for 90% of its market value. The investor lineup reflects how seriously the sports and real-money gaming VC world is taking this category. Lloyd Danzig, Managing Partner at Sharp Alpha, said the firm continues to be “excited about the intersection of collectibles and gaming." Following the raise, the company is now hiring across engineering and design, offering base salaries up to $300K and “meaningful equity.”
Why it matters: Packz sits at a genuinely interesting crossroads: it's part e-commerce, part betting, and part collectibles marketplace with a product that compresses the sports card economy into a single mobile experience. With Sharp Alpha and DraftKings execs at the table, it also signals how some of the most interesting products and innovation around betting mechanics are coming from outside the industry itself.
Pumpcade raises $1M pre-seed for faster, data-verified prediction market
The news: Pumpcade, a prediction markets platform built around ultra-short time windows, closed a $1M pre-seed round led by Pump.fun, with Foundation Capital and angel investor RadioSolace also participating. The company is coming out of private beta and plans to launch open beta and mainnet in Q2.
Zoom in: Pumpcade's core pitch is quick action and verifiable data. The product offers short-duration bets (anywhere from 60 seconds to 30 minutes) on crypto prices, stocks, sports, traffic, or anything with a verifiable data feed, cutting out counterparty disputes and delays. Founder Harrison Leggio put it this way: "Modern trading platforms have conditioned users to expect instant feedback and faster dopamine hits. Pumpcade is built for exactly that, with markets revolving in seconds, not weeks."
Why it matters: The prediction market space has been dominated by longer-tail resolution windows—Polymarket markets can run for weeks or months. Pumpcade is going after a different user behavior: fast, impulse-driven bets tied to live data feeds and ultimately, a true source of truth. Pumpcade is the latest example in a trend of products optimizing for speed and always-on action (think: FEEN and Blitz:Draft).
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i3Soft founder says online poker forgot its casual players—and now they want to win them back
The news: i3Soft, the software company founded by former PokerNews CEO and PokerStars director John Caldwell, just launched its flagship poker product after a four-year development cycle. The suite has two pieces: Skip It, a multi-table tournament format that compresses a 12-to-14-hour online tournament into about two and a half hours by using AI to play users through the early stages, and Poker Casino, a set of casino games built specifically for poker players.
Zoom in: Caldwell's diagnosis is that online poker has lost its recreational players because tournaments take too long and casuals can't win anymore—and the usual cross-sell pitch isn't landing either. "Casinos are like, hey Mr. Poker player, come try Big Bass Bonanza," Caldwell said on The Betting Startup Podcast. "The poker players are like, F you. I just don't personally think that's effective."
Why it matters: Liquidity has always been the hardest part of running online poker, and i3Soft is pitching casinos a plug-and-play iframe that removes the customer service and fraud overhead while solving the rec-player problem operators have quietly been struggling with for years. Caldwell says commercial conversations have accelerated sharply in the last 90 days, with 2026 targets of five Skip It clients on shared liquidity and 25 Poker Casino installs—a useful bellwether for whether the industry actually believes the recreational player can be won back.
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News, money, and alpha 🗞️
Predict.fun announced a strategic funding round with YZi Labs and Susquehanna Crypto.
Applications for SBC First Pitch close in just over a week ($100K prize package)---apply now.
InsightPlay has been shortlisted for Rising Star in Sports Betting (Supplier) at SBC Awards Europe 2026.
Kalshi co-founders sat down with Dan Primack for a 30-minute interview on The Axios Show.
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