This week: SpeedLabs raises $6.5M to create new sports markets from in-game moments

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SpeedLabs raises $6.5M to create new sports markets from in-game moments

The news: SpeedLabs, a New York-based sports technology startup, has raised a $6.5M seed round led by Parlay Capital Holdings (early backers of PrizePicks) to build what it calls a real-time market engine for sports. Bullpen Capital (early backed in FanDuel), TA Ventures, EdgeEquity, BettingStartups Capital, and others also participated. The company plans to launch its first product, Momentum Markets, in summer 2026.

Zoom in: Rather than repricing existing markets when something happens on the field, SpeedLabs' engine reads live game flow using foundation models built for sports and generates entirely new markets in response. The B2B play targets sportsbooks, prediction markets, and crypto-native operators. "They all have an audience watching live and almost nothing live-native to give them," CEO Nick Meader said in a release.

Why it matters: Sportsbooks have largely sat out the live-moment trading wave that's made prediction markets like Polymarket compelling—Polymarket's short-duration Bitcoin markets have reportedly done over $4B in total volume. “The bet here is that attention has moved to the live moment, and what's held the category back is product, not demand,” Meader tells us. “When you make that moment instantly actionable, this stops being a niche feature and becomes a default way fans engage with live sports.”

Avanti Studios raises $5.8M seed for virtual live dealers

The news: Avanti Studios has closed a €5M ($5.8M) oversubscribed seed round, bringing total funding to €10M. The raise was backed by Genting Casinos UK (returning investor from the first round) alongside other undisclosed investors. The company was co-founded by Gustaf Hagman, former CEO of LeoVegas, and Jonas Delin, former CEO of LeoVegas's live dealer arm Authentic.

Zoom in: Avanti says its first piece of casino content is set to deploy in the "coming weeks," with Spain as the initial test market before a broader rollout that includes Brazil. The company's pitch is cost disruption: using Unreal Engine, cloud streaming, motion capture, and AI to replicate the live dealer experience at a fraction of the traditional operating cost. Hagman noted on LinkedIn that the team draws from AAA gaming, AI, and streaming backgrounds—with alumni from Google, Electronic Arts, Meta, NASA, and several major game studios.

Why it matters: Avanti isn't building in a vacuum, and indeed represents the latest example in a growing trend. Crypto operator BetHog raised $10M in April for Sentient Studios, a B2B platform that lets online casino operators deploy AI-powered live dealers, arguing traditional live dealers are too costly and too rigid. Playgon Games signed a partnership with animation studio Digital Nation Entertainment for AI dealers the same month, targeting Q3 operator deployments. Three companies converging on the same thesis in the same quarter is a signal. The cost-disruption arguments seem to be met with appetite, too— Hagman says the upstart has “signed agreements with several of the world’s largest iGaming operators. They see what we see—the future of real-time, lifelike, interactive digital humans.”

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Trendline Labs wants to close the information gap between casual and pro prediction market traders

The news: Gregory Tolmochow has built Trendline Labs, a unified terminal for prediction markets that lets users research, model, and trade across exchanges—including Kalshi, Polymarket, and Limitless—from a single interface. The platform is in private beta, with a full launch expected in the coming weeks, and is raising a $3M seed round to cover licensing costs including an introducing broker license required to collect trading fees in the U.S.

Zoom in: The platform's most distinctive feature is Optimus, an AI model that surfaces its own implied probability estimate by pulling in news, tweets, and Reddit threads to explain why a market is priced the way it is—backed by historical data Tolmochow says he's been storing since day one because no one else was. "Everybody was focused on being a unified brokerage," he said on the podcast. "But now when somebody sends you a Bloomberg article, you trust it. And we want the same exact thing to be happening with Trendline."

Why it matters: Most competitors are optimizing for high-frequency traders, but Tolmochow estimates 90% of Kalshi's revenue last year came from recreational users who want to understand a market, not just trade it mechanically. The real opportunity, his argument goes, isn't faster order routing, but closing the information gap between casual traders and the pros.

Go deeper with Tolmochow on what he’s building here—or, listen to our podcast with him on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

News, money, and alpha 🗞️

• Blitz:Draft announced a strategic partnership with Sterling Select Group ahead of a pre-seed round it says will open to accredited investors shortly.

• Waterhouse VC's Tom Waterhouse argues that AI widens the gap between elite betting operations and weaker modellers rather than closing it.

• OneHazel won the NEXT.io Startup Pitch Competition last week, taking first place with its AI-powered integration platform that lets operators build and maintain connectors in minutes.

• Odditt was selected by Amelco as a sports data provider, integrating the company’s historical data into its model development stack.

Great gigs 💼

Big opportunities with awesome growth-stage companies, brought to you by BettingJobs.

• 🆕 Outlier is hiring a Product Marketing Manager to own positioning, GTM strategy, and product launches for a subscription-based sports betting analytics platform. Remote (USA). (View job)

• 🆕 i3Soft is looking for an Online Gaming Account Manager to manage and grow commercial client relationships. Remote, Gibraltar or Andalusia area preferred. (View job)

• Novig is looking for a Product Designer to shape the core experience of its sports prediction market—from concepting new features to shipping polished interfaces — in its Union Square, NYC office. (View job)

From the studio 🎙️

Catch up on the latest episodes of The BettingStartups Podcast.

• Meet the intelligence layer for the outcome economy w/ Gregory Tolmochow from Trendline Labs

• Meet the First Pitch finalists competing for $100k in prizes

• Building the AI-native orchestration layer for payments in gaming w/ Filip from Soap

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Are you a startup in real-money gaming looking to announce a new product launch, partnership, or funding round? Get it on our radar! Email: [email protected]