a16z speedrun SR001 companies

As of Sep 25, 2026, 25 companies · 37 founders

    View on speedrun.a16z.com (opens in a new tab)

    SR001 at a glance

    Companies
    25
    Founders
    37
    Founders per company
    1.5
    Median team size
    12

    Most common tags

    Share of companies. A company can carry several tags.

    • Gaming19 · 76%
    • Media / Entertainment / Creator Economy6 · 24%
    • AI Agents5 · 20%
    • AI Generative Media4 · 16%
    • Consumer4 · 16%
    • AI Infra2 · 8%

    Where they are based

    Share of 25 companies with a listed location; 84% are in the US.

    • SF Bay Area11 · 44%
    • Austin3 · 12%
    • Los Angeles2 · 8%
    • Seattle2 · 8%

    Companies in SR001

    Showing 25 of 25 companies

    • Canto Reality

      Canto Reality builds social experiences powered by AI, targeting consumer audiences. The company operates as an exploratory deployment lab, testing and shipping interactive social products. Its work sits at the intersection of AI research and consumer application, replacing static or conventional social formats with AI-driven interactions.

      cantoreality.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Consumer
      AI Models / Research
      Location: Palo Alto, California, USA
      Team of 7
      Founded 2023
      Founders:
      • Aryan Deshpande
      • Shuby Deshpande
    • Elsewhere

      Elsewhere builds multiplayer video games that use generative AI to make each session distinct, targeting players who want shared, replayable adventures with friends. The studio treats AI as a core production tool rather than a gimmick, replacing the fixed, hand-scripted experiences that traditional game development delivers.

      elsewhere.zone (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      AI Agents
      Location: San Francisco, California, USA
      Team of 5
      Founded 2024
      Founders:
      • Paul Sawaya
    • Ex-Human

      Ex-Human builds an empathetic AI platform that lets businesses create AI characters capable of text, image, and video interactions. The platform is trained on real conversational data to produce emotionally responsive, personalized exchanges. It serves consumer and B2B clients in media, entertainment, and the creator economy, replacing scripted chatbots and static virtual characters with companions that adapt to individual users.

      exh.ai (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Consumer
      Media / Entertainment / Creator Economy
      AI Agents
      Location: Boulder, Colorado, USA
      Team of 20
      Founded 2021
      Founders:
      • Artem Rodichev
    • GGFolks

      GGFolks builds and operates cross-platform MMOs, targeting casual and community-oriented gamers on Steam, iOS, and Android. Its flagship title, Puzzle Wizards, is a cozy co-op MMO in early access, while the team also helps run legacy titles Puzzle Pirates and Spiral Knights, which retain active player communities. The studio replaces third-party publishing by owning the full development and operations stack across its game portfolio.

      puzzlewizards.net (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      Location: San Francisco, California, USA
      Team of 5
      Founded 2019
      Founders:
      • Daniel James
    • Househunt

      Househunt turns real residential listings into a mobile game where players guess house prices, then buy, fix, and flip properties to build a virtual real estate portfolio. It targets casual and real-estate-curious players who want the strategy of property investing without real capital at stake, replacing board games like Monopoly with actual market data and real home listings.

      playhousehunt.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      Real Estate / Prop Tech
      Location: Austin, Texas, USA
      Team of 3
      Founded 2023
      Founders:
      • Ankith Harathi
      • Nitin Rajinikanth
    • Incite Interactive

      Incite Interactive builds AuraVale, an agentic life simulation game where players shape open-ended narratives through natural language rather than following scripted storylines. The studio also develops the underlying agentic game engine, which lets anyone create AI-driven characters and scenarios and share them on the platform. The product targets players who want authored, personal stories and replaces the fixed narrative structures of traditional life simulation games.

      incite.dev (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      AI Agents
      Location: Redwood City, California, USA
      Team of 5
      Founded 2023
      Founders:
      • Andrew Friday
      • Dan Fessler
      • Nico Coderre
    • Level Headed Games

      Level Headed Games builds original multiplayer games targeting Gen Z and cross-generational players. Its debut title, Whimpact!, combines arena party-game mechanics in the vein of Fall Guys or Mario Kart with a creature-collection system, where players level up companions called Whims to gain in-game powers, adding long-term progression to short-session play. The studio draws on team experience across billion-dollar franchises to produce commercial-scale titles without the budgets of major publishers.

      levelheadedgames.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      Location: Seattle, Washington, USA
      Team of 9
      Founded 2023
      Founders:
      • Leah Hoyer
    • Matchday

      Matchday builds casual mobile soccer games for the global soccer fan base, starting with Matchday Champions, a collectible card squad-builder using officially licensed players from FIFPRO's roster of professional athletes. The product targets the large casual end of the gaming market that major sports titles have historically underserved, replacing unlicensed or generic soccer game experiences with real player IP.

      matchday.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      Sports Tech
      Location: San Francisco, California, USA
      Team of 30
      Founded 2022
      Founders:
      • Derrick Ko
    • Neon

      Neon builds white-label e-commerce and payments infrastructure for mobile and PC game studios that want to sell directly to players outside the app stores. Studios use Neon's platform to launch web shops, handle global checkout, and manage subscriptions and virtual-goods SKUs, replacing a patchwork of payment processors and custom storefront builds. The product lets game teams own the customer relationship and capture margin that would otherwise go to platform fees.

      neonpay.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Fintech
      Gaming
      Commerce / Marketplaces
      Location: San Francisco, California, USA
      Team of 20
      Founded 2022
      Founders:
      • Chris Faught
    • Original Games

      Original Games develops casual mobile games built for broad, mainstream audiences. Its current title, Merge Inn, targets players who want relaxing, session-friendly gameplay, replacing the low-engagement, low-retention experiences that dominate the casual market. The team draws on veterans from Rovio, Wooga, EA, and Easybrain to compete for the next breakout casual hit.

      originalgames.io (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      Location: Singapore
      Team of 47
      Founded 2019
      Founders:
      • Arseny Lebedev
    • Rascal Games

      Rascal Games builds a social gaming platform where players form lasting friend groups, create shared identities, and go on adventures together. It targets gamers who want an ongoing digital home with their friends, replacing the scattered, transient social experience of hopping between disconnected games and chat tools.

      rascalgames.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      Location: Berkeley, California, USA
      Team of 10
      Founded 2023
      Founders:
      • Jonathan Lin
      • Rick Ling
    • Ray Browser

      Ray Browser builds a desktop web browser for everyday consumers that replaces passive, generic browsing with a personalized, agent-driven experience. A built-in AI agent searches the web and acts on open tabs on the user's behalf, a daily Discover feed surfaces content based on the user's own reading and activity, and Ray Studio lets users build tools, dashboards, and apps from their data using plain-language descriptions, no code required.

      playonray.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Consumer
      Gaming
      AI Agents
      Location: Espoo, Finland
      Team of 15
      Founded 2022
    • Rosebud AI

      Rosebud AI builds a browser-based game creation platform that lets non-technical creators build and publish games through natural-language prompts, replacing the need to write code or use traditional game engines. Creators describe a game concept and the platform generates a playable result, covering 2D, 3D, RPG, visual novel, and other formats. The product targets hobbyists, educators, and creators who want to make games without engineering skills.

      rosebud.ai (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      AI Agents
      Location: San Francisco, California, USA
      Team of 12
      Founded 2020
      Founders:
      • Lisha Li
    • Runware

      Runware builds a unified API for AI-generated images, audio, and video, running on proprietary renewable-energy hardware. It targets developers and product teams who need generative media at scale without managing infrastructure or machine-learning models. The API replaces in-house GPU provisioning and model deployment, delivering sub-second generation at a fraction of typical cloud inference costs.

      runware.ai (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      AI Infra
      Location: London, United Kingdom
      Team of 40
      Founded 2023
      Founders:
      • Flaviu Radulescu
      • Maura Dima
    • Sloyd

      Sloyd builds an AI-powered 3D model creation platform for game developers, animators, AR/VR creators, and 3D printing enthusiasts. Users generate production-ready 3D assets from text prompts or images and refine them through templates, sliders, and toggles, replacing manual modeling work in tools like Blender or Maya. The platform supports in-game user-generated content creation, extending its reach beyond solo creators to game studios enabling player-built worlds.

      sloyd.ai (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      AI Generative Media
      Location: Austin, Texas, USA
      Team of 12
      Founded 2023
      Founders:
      • Andreas Edesberg
    • SuperGaming

      SuperGaming builds and operates real-time multiplayer mobile games targeting the next billion players across emerging markets. The studio develops original titles, including the Indo-futuristic battle royale Indus for India and Prime Rush for Brazil and MENA, replacing the gap left by Western-designed games that ignore regional culture and infrastructure. It also co-develops and operates multiplayer games for third-party publishers, handling full-cycle development, live operations, localization, and user acquisition.

      supergaming.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      Location: Pune, India and Singapore, Singapore
      Team of 150
      Founded 2019
      Founders:
      • Christelle Dcruz
      • Roby John
    • Talofa Games

      Talofa Games builds a platform for creators to develop and publish fitness games targeting Gen Z players. Its flagship title, Run Legends, turns physical movement into mobile gameplay, replacing passive screen time with activity-driven sessions. The company also has Monster Walk in closed beta, expanding its roster of motion-based games.

      talofagames.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Consumer
      Gaming
      Location: San Francisco, California, USA
      Team of 10
      Founded 2019
      Founders:
      • Jenny Xu
    • The Possible Company

      The Possible Company builds an AI-powered moviemaking tool that turns written content into short animated films. Writers, bloggers, and newsletter authors use it to convert existing text into video with generated images, voiceover, and sound, replacing manual video production. The product meets storytellers at the writing stage and handles the rest of the media assembly automatically.

      thepossible.io (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Media / Entertainment / Creator Economy
      AI Generative Media
      Location: San Francisco, California, USA
      Team of 2
      Founded 2023
      Founders:
      • Phil Chacko
      • Venk Subramanian
    • Torbie

      Torbie builds cooperative, exploration-driven games for players who want shared discovery alongside systemic depth. Its debut title, Everbloom, is a farming and homestead game where players tend animals with heritable traits, build and customize a farm, and explore a handcrafted open world full of hidden stories. The studio targets the cozy-game and co-op audience, replacing more passive solo play with systems that reward curiosity and connection.

      playeverbloom.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      Location: Seattle, Washington, USA
      Team of 7
      Founded 2022
      Founders:
      • Riley Gravatt
      • Sheridan Beebe
      • Zabir Hoque
    • Trass Games

      Trass Games builds Yeeps, a free-to-play social VR game on Meta Quest where players create and share user-generated content in the style of sandbox titles like Minecraft and Roblox. The studio is expanding Yeeps from a hide-and-seek game into a full UGC platform, replacing the PC and mobile sandbox experience with a VR-native equivalent. The work it displaces is the flat-screen, controller-based creative multiplayer session.

      yeeps.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      Media / Entertainment / Creator Economy
      Location: San Francisco, California, USA
      Team of 13
      Founded 2021
      Founders:
      • Jack Southard
      • Steve Shockey
    • Unleashed Games

      Unleashed Games builds Haven, a cross-platform cooperative RPG for families and friends, targeting an underserved audience of female gamers and gamer parents. Players explore a shared fantasy world together across PC, Mac, console, and mobile, replacing solitary or competitive play with collaborative adventure. The team behind titles such as World of Warcraft, Medal of Honor, and Monopoly Go! is designing the experience around social connection rather than competition.

      unleashedgames.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      AI Generative Media
      Location: Cumberland, Rhode Island, USA
      Team of 12
      Founded 2022
      Founders:
      • Irena Pereira
    • Uthana

      Uthana builds generative AI models for 3D human motion, serving game studios, simulation teams, and robotics developers. Its platform converts text or video into editable, production-ready character animation and transfers that motion across character skeletons or humanoid robots. It replaces manual animation workflows, including rigging, retargeting, and motion blending, that traditionally take days or weeks of artist time.

      uthana.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Gaming
      Media / Entertainment / Creator Economy
      AI Generative Media
      Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
      Team of 8
      Founded 2023
      Founders:
      • Viren Tellis
    • Voidpet

      Voidpet builds a mobile RPG around collectible emotion-based creatures called Voidpets, targeting players who engage with character-driven games. The product spans a game, an anime, and an illustrated creature index, replacing passive entertainment with an expanding interactive universe players collect and explore.

      voidpet.com (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Healthcare
      Gaming
      Media / Entertainment / Creator Economy
      Location: Austin, Texas, USA
      Team of 3
      Founded 2021
      Founders:
      • Ben Awad
      • Linda Awad
    • Windwalk

      Harbor builds a community operating system for gaming studios and large fandoms, consolidating audiences from Discord, web hubs, and email into unified fan profiles. Marketing teams use it to run quests, rewards, and multi-channel campaigns without engineering support, replacing a patchwork of separate community tools and manual data collection.

      harbor.gg (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Adtech / Marketing Tech
      Media / Entertainment / Creator Economy
      Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
      Team of 30
      Founded 2018
      Founders:
      • Colin Feo
      • Richard Warren
    • Zibra AI

      Zibra AI builds GPU-native compression infrastructure for large-scale 3D and volumetric data, targeting teams training spatial AI models in robotics, autonomous systems, digital twins, and simulation-heavy domains. Its PyTorch-integrated pipeline compresses 3D datasets and decompresses them in real time at the GPU, raising utilization and accelerating model convergence without changes to existing training workflows. On the content-creation side, the same compression technology powers real-time volumetric rendering tools for VFX, virtual production, and game development inside Unreal Engine and Unity, replacing offline render pipelines.

      zibra.ai (opens in a new tab)
      Tags:
      Deep Tech
      AI Infra
      Location: Lewes, Delaware, USA
      Team of 14
      Founded 2021
      Founders:
      • Alex Petrenko

    About this data

    We list facts from a16z speedrun's public directory: names, websites, locations, team sizes, and founders. Company descriptions stay on the source; each company links to its original page.

    While a cohort is still filling, we check its roster every day, and each page shows the date of the last check. Companies that drop off the directory drop off the roster here too.

    Source: speedrun.a16z.com (opens in a new tab) GPAgent is not affiliated with Andreessen Horowitz or a16z speedrun.

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