Proactive Investors - Streaks Gaming PLC, the developer of a conversational gaming platform that taps into the fast-growing US sports betting market, has raised £3mln as part of its initial public offer in London, with the majority invested by Aqru PLC (AQUIS:AQRU).
AQRU, a decentralised finance incubator, has bought £2.3mln worth of shares, which were priced at 3p apiece.
Streaks, which had wanted to raise between £5mln and £10mln from the IPO, is expected to see its shares begin trading on 5 January 2023.
The company said it will then be the LSE's first conversational gaming company, where it uses its natural language processing (NLP) text generators to run free conversational games that it said "will not involve betting, wagering or any other activity that requires licensing".
Streaks uses the same GPT-3 technology developed by OpenAI, which forms the basis for its own ChatGPT chatbot.
Proceeds from the fundraising will be used to continue to build the product, attract new players, invest in the brand and expand its activities, Streaks said.
In a statement, AQRU chief executive Philip Blows said: "We are delighted to make such a major investment in Streaks, a company with huge growth potential. It is part of our strategy to diversify our investments and Streaks is operating in an exciting area that should see significant opportunities as interest in conversational gaming grows rapidly. We are excited to be a lead investor and support this evolution."
Mike Edwards, chairman of Streaks, added: "The growing global popularity of GPT coupled with the opening of the US sports marketing presents a generational marketing opportunity.
"We firmly believe that prospective players will be introduced to sports betting through casual conversational gaming powered by GPT-3, which would allow users to put their sports knowledge to the test against digital personalities. Conversational gaming and GPT-3 will be the medium through which many new players may be introduced to sports betting."
As the first conversational gaming company to join the LSE, the Streaks chairman said this will "provide us with the caché, credibility and capital to fulfil our ambition to become one of the world's most recognizable consumer conversational gaming brands within three years."