Romanian gaming optimization startup Machinations raises $3,3 million investment to continue growth

The round was led by Hiro Capital - a European venture capital firm focused on the gaming industry - and follow-on investments by Acequia Capital, Venrex Investment Management and GapMinder.

"We're humbled to be backed by such reputed VCs and have their confidence in our vision and role within the games industry and beyond. We're growing our team and rolling out integrations with the most popular in-game telemetry providers and Web3 marketplaces, pushing towards our goal of becoming the standard for game economy modelling, forecasting and optimisation", Mihai Gheza, co-founder & CEO at Machinations.io.

"The team at Machinations.io has forged a set of tools that will be foundational in the future of game design, both centralised games and Web3. The ability for any development studio to use a web platform that is simple, efficient, and specially created to make in-game economies in a streamlined browser-based solution is revolutionary", said Spike Laurie, partner at Hiro Capital.

Machinations.io is a start-up launched in 2018 by Mihai Gheza, Dana Gheza, Radu Crăciun, Alin Moldovan and Joris Dormans, professor at Leiden University Center for the Arts in Society (Netherlands). Machinations originated as a Ph.D. research at the University of Amsterdam in 2012 by Joris Dormans (co-founder).

The start-up has attracted so far about $5 million as investments. Before this Series A round, Machinations.io has raised $1.6 million in funding from Seedcamp, GapMinder, Acequia Capital and several top angel investors.

"We first invested in Machinations.io in 2020, in a round that we led. We continue to support the founders due to the uniqueness of the product they created. This product completely changes the way games are made and designed and implicitly how the largest entertainment industry develops", says Cosmin Ochișor, GapMinder partner.

The platform is currently used by more than 35,000 professionals in game design and 400 academic institutions worldwide.

Founded in 2018, Machinations.io is the first and only browser-based platform used by more than 35.000 professionals to design and predict game economies & systems for premium, free-to-play, and play-to-earn games. Machinations.io originated as a PhD research at the University of Amsterdam in 2012 by Joris Dormans (co-founder). It has since spread organically through more than 400 academic institutions across the planet. With a fast-growing open community building in public and rolling out integrations with the most popular telemetry providers & markets, the platform is set to become the standard for game economy modelling,forecasting and optimisation.