real-money-gaming
(9)
DraftKings Inc.
DraftKings began with a baseball contest built in a spare bedroom. Fourteen years later, it is a $6 billion test of how deeply a betting interface can be woven into the way America watches sports.
AGS - American Gaming Systems
The Las Vegas machine-maker spent two decades climbing from tribal bingo halls to the main casino floor. Now private again and freshly rebranded around a lightning bolt, AGS is betting its next act on cabinets, table games, and the screen in your pocket.
Lucra
Lucra is a B2B competitive-loyalty platform that lets brands run live social competitions - tournaments, head-to-head challenges and mini-games - inside their own apps and websites through a white-label SDK. Originally launched in 2019 as a peer-to-peer real-money sports gaming app, the company pivoted to selling gamified engagement as a modern alternative to points-based loyalty programs, handling compliance, payments and fraud as a merchant of record. Its clients include Dave & Buster's, Five Iron Golf, TouchTunes and ChessKings, and in April 2026 it raised a $20M Series B led by ARK Invest's venture fund - ARK's first time leading an early-stage deal.
Dylan Robbins
Dylan Robbins is the founder and CEO of Lucra, a New York-based company that gives brands a white-label software kit for running peer-to-peer, real-money gaming and competitions inside their own apps. A former Goldman Sachs and AQR analyst with a Stanford MBA and a Duke undergraduate degree, Robbins started Lucra in 2019 with co-founder Michael Madding after the two spent years informally tracking sports wagers with friends. He pivoted the company from a consumer app to a B2B2C SDK in 2023, and in 2026 raised a $20M Series B led by ARK Invest - the fund's first lead investment in a non-AI startup.
Sean Ryan
Sean Ryan is the CEO and co-founder of ZOOT (GetZoot), a New York-based social sweepstakes gaming platform that swaps casino slots for arcade-style games like Plinko, Mines, Crash and Dice played for cash prizes. A 30-year gaming and digital-media operator, he built and led Facebook's multi-billion-dollar games business for 11 years, ran the digital music service Listen.com/Rhapsody, and co-founded social casino studio Open Wager (maker of LuckyLand Slots), which sold to VGW in 2017. In June 2025 he raised $6 million in seed funding led by CoinFund with Griffin Gaming Partners to turn ZOOT's US sweepstakes business into a global, stablecoin-powered gaming network.
Jake Brooks
Jake Brooks is the co-founder and co-CEO of Triumph, a San Francisco company that gives mobile game developers a drop-in SDK to add real-money, skill-based tournaments to their games. He dropped out of Stanford during the pandemic to build it, and in 2023 the company launched with $14.1M in seed and Series A funding led by General Catalyst. Triumph handles the hard parts - payments, KYC, anti-fraud, matchmaking and state-by-state compliance - so developers can monetize beyond ads. Brooks pitches real-money competition as a third pillar of game revenue alongside advertising and in-app purchases.
Triumph
Triumph (Triumph Labs) is a San Francisco company that turns ordinary mobile games into real-money skill tournaments. Its plug-and-play SDK lets developers add cash competitions with a single line of code, while Triumph handles the hard parts behind the scenes: payments, KYC identity checks, state-by-state legal compliance, geolocation, matchmaking, anti-cheat, and payouts. Founded in 2021 by Stanford dropouts Jake Brooks and Jared Geller, the company raised $14.1M (a $10.2M Series A led by General Catalyst plus a $3.9M seed) and also runs its own consumer apps - Triumph Arcade for skill games and Rips for card collectibles.
Avia (AviaGames)
Avia (formerly AviaGames) is a San Mateo-based mobile gaming company behind Pocket7Games, a skill-based tournament platform where players compete in puzzle, card, bingo, and arcade titles for cash prizes. Founded in 2017 by Vickie Chen and Ping Wang, the company uses algorithmic skill matchmaking and a single-wallet system across a portfolio that includes Solitaire Clash, Bingo Clash, and Bubble Buzz.
Vickie Chen
Vickie Yanjuan Chen is the founder and CEO of Avia (AviaGames), the Silicon Valley company behind Pocket7Games - a real-money skill-based mobile gaming platform with 60M+ downloads, 450M+ monthly tournaments, and over $60M in venture funding. A 20-year gaming industry veteran who previously ran global publishing for Nasdaq-listed Changyou.com, Chen built Avia from a Mountain View garage with co-founder Ping Wang into a 400-person company that has paid out over $700M in cash prizes to players. Recognized by Forbes China as a 2022 Global Chinese Elite Top 100 Industry Leader, she is a vocal advocate for inclusive gaming and female leadership in tech.