Echo Chess maker Echo Chunk raises $1.4 million in pre-seed round with a "passion" for AI

• Echo Chunk has raised $1.4 million in a pre-seed round
• The AI startup has already launched its first game, Echo Chess

AI startup Echo Chunk, creator of Echo Chess, has raised $1.4 million in a pre-seed funding round from investors across the tech and games industries.

Top investors included Andreessen Horowitz through its early-stage accelerator a16z Speedrun, Zynga founder and chairman Mark Pincus, Opendoor founder and CEO Eric Wu, and Roblox head of generative AI Stef Corazza.

Further participation came from ArenaNet founder and former Blizzard VP Patrick Wyatt, Snapser CEO AJ Apte, South Park Commons, and others.

Daily echoes

The pre-seed investment came after Echo Chunk’s first game, Echo Chess, gained a reported "wildfire popularity" with puzzle gamers and mainstream audiences.

It’s a puzzle title designed around daily play, with chess-inspired puzzles requiring players to navigate obstacles and claim all opposing pieces on a board. However, each time a piece is claimed, the player becomes that piece, meaning movement types and capturing styles constantly change.

New puzzles are added every 24 hours, tapping into a similar daily draw as popular titles like Wordle. Echo Chess’ Blitz Mode also features procedurally generated roguelike levels, enabling endless play through the power of AI.

"We're honoured to be supported by top minds in tech and games to bring the Echo Chunk vision to life, and to leverage the power of AI in game design. These amazing partners immediately understood our passion for AI’s role in the co-creation process of the future," said Echo Chunk founder and CEO Sami Ramly.

"It was pretty clear to me that companies that can natively leverage AI in game design will be able to shorten the learning cycle of game creation, lower the barrier for user-generated content, and empower what we do best as humans to create the best games of tomorrow. So we set out to build them ourselves, starting with Echo Chess."

AI enhancements

Commenting on the round, Andreessen Horowitz partner Josh Lu said: "We firmly believe that Al will enhance the ingenuity of game designers, and the Echo Chess team has demonstrated this brilliantly with their debut title by using AI to put a fresh spin on their daily game.

"They've done so really quickly with a very small team, and have already built a passionate community of players and speedrunners with fresh content every day. That's something that would have been extremely difficult a few years ago.”

Pincus added: "When you see a big shift in tech, game companies that get it early have the best odds of winning. We saw it at Zynga with social and mobile, and now it's happening with AI. The Echo Chess team gets it. Their vision for where game design is heading is innovative, and their first game is super fun."

Former Zen Match devs recently raised $3 million in a pre-seed funding round for Grand Games, another new studio leveraging AI tech.