Sequoia India & Southeast Asia has announced the eighth cohort of Surge, its startup accelerator programme, while Animoca Brands has acquired German game developer Sviper GmbhH.
Surge backs 12 startups in 8th cohort
Sequoia India & Southeast Asia has, along with co-investors, invested in 12 startups that form part of the eighth cohort of Surge, its startup accelerator programme.
Surge 8 features 30 founders across 12 startups in Southeast Asia and India that are building products across climate tech, AI, the Metaverse, digital health, new consumer brands, and new models of e-commerce, according to the announcement.
Six of the startups have at least one female founder, including two medical doctors from Indonesia and a PhD holder focused on AI in healthcare.
The startups in the cohort include metaverse gaming platform Altworld; AI-powered autonomous medical coding platform Arintra; virtual world builder Bifrost; carbon credit rating startup Calyx Global; consumer-first tech platform Diri Care; and food tech firm MasterChow.
It also includes the modern-wedding online platform Meragi; deep tech company Metastable Materials; SaaS platforms RedBrick AI and Requestly; Indonesia’s parenting platform Tentang Anak; and Indian home products marketplace Vaaree.
The co-investors in the cohort include Insignia Venture Partners, Goodwater Capital, Y Combinator, East Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, SuperMorpheus Fund, GTM Fund, Goose Capital, New Climate Ventures, Susquehanna, Time Zero Capital, Grand Anicut Fund (GAF), WEH Ventures, Venture Highway, Speciale Invest, Theia Ventures, 100x Entrepreneur, Titan Capital, Venture, All In Capital, Better Capital, and Peer Capital.
With the latest cohort, Surge’s curated community of startups now includes more than 300 founders and at least 130 startups across 16 sectors.
Kicked off in 2019, Surge is a pre-Series A programme that invests $1 million to $2 million of capital and helps early-stage founders with mentorship to build their companies. The programme began with an initial corpus of $200 million.
Animoca Brands unit acquires German game developer Sviper
Hong Kong-based gaming software and venture capital platform Animoca Brands announced that its subsidiary has acquired German game developer Sviper GmbhH for an undisclosed amount.
The acquisition, carried out by The Sandbox, adds development, engineering, and creative talent to The Sandbox’s global team, according to the announcement.
Sviper is a game development studio founded in 2016 by industry veterans with PC, mobile and free-to-play experience. It works with some of the biggest PC and mobile IPs and partners in the world.
The company said it has been collaborating with The Sandbox for over a year and is fully integrated into the platform’s ecosystem.
In December, Animoca Brands took a majority stake in Los Angeles-based Pixelynx, a music metaverse gaming platform based in Los Angeles.
