Verse8, a Seoul, South Korea-based AI-native platform, raised $5 million in a seed funding round. The company announced the raise recently, following its stealth launch in July. Story Foundation led the round, with participation from NEXPACE, Neowiz, MARBLEX, Solarium Labs, and NEXUS. Verse8 develops a platform that turns text prompts into fully playable, multiplayer games in minutes, without requiring code, engine setup, or production teams.
Funding Overview
Story Foundation led Verse8’s $5 million seed round, with participation from NEXPACE, the Web3 division of Nexon, alongside Neowiz and MARBLEX, Netmarble’s Web3 arm. Additional backing came from Solarium Labs and NEXUS.
The funding supports platform expansion, creator tools, and creator growth scaling. Verse8 plans to advance its core AI systems, expand creator onboarding and incentives, and scale publishing and distribution infrastructure.
Key traction metrics since the July stealth launch include:
- Over 3.5 million monthly active users across play and creation.
- More than 5,000 monthly active creators.
- Over 25,000 games generated.
About the Company
Verse8, headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, is building an AI-driven platform that enables users to create fully playable multiplayer games directly from text prompts. The platform streamlines the entire development process, handling everything from asset creation to deployment, allowing games to be launched quickly without traditional development workflows.
Founders JC Kim and Kevin Lee have blockchain gaming and investment experience from Line, startups with exits, and $200M+ in gaming deployments. Jake Song (Nexon cofounder, Lineage creator) advises on AI features. Story Protocol integration enables on-chain IP ownership, licensing, revenue sharing, and remixing.
CEO Kevin Lee stated: “Just three million creators globally produce interactive content, and the top 20 studios control 70% of all production. Verse8 changes that dynamic.”
A spokesperson noted: Verse8 lowers creation barriers without replacing artists, complies with LLM copyrights, and uses Story for verifiable IP sharing. The team has 20 people.
Investors
The seed round investors explicitly backed Verse8 as follows:
- Story Foundation invested and integrates via Story Protocol for on-chain features.
- NEXPACE
- Neowiz
- MARBLEX
- Solarium Labs
- NEXUS
- Additional investors from gaming, media, and technology joined.
S.Y. Lee, CEO of Story Foundation, stated: “AI is collapsing the cost of creation across every media format, but games have been the last holdout. Verse8 is attacking the hardest part of that problem; compressing months of development and millions in capital into minutes of natural language prompting, and doing it in a way that aligns creators, IP holders, and distribution from day one. We believe this marks the beginning of a new creation stack for interactive media, with Verse8 at its center.”
Market Context
Game development requires long cycles, multidisciplinary teams, and budgets often reaching tens of millions of dollars. This concentrates production among a few studios. Verse8 reduces barriers by enabling text prompts to create live, shared worlds in minutes.
Generative AI has lowered costs for video, music, and images. Interactive experiences like games remain complex. Verse8 targets this gap, focusing on real-time, multiplayer creation for broad access. The company views this as groundwork for AI-native interactive media, starting with games.
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