Quick take:
- Plai Labs is building social platforms that leverage Web3 and generative AI technology.
- The company’s first product is ‘Champions Ascension’, an MMORPG where players can port their existing NFT characters into the game.
- The game is currently in beta and open to NFT holders.
Web3 social platform Plai Labs, founded by former Jam City and Myspace executives, has raised $32 million in a seed round led by a16z.
Plai Labs’ founding team comprises executive VP of marketing and operations Josh Brooks, CEO Chris DeWolfe and CTO Aber Whitcomb. Brooks was the senior VP of corporate marketing and recruiting at Jam City as well as VP of programming and music at MySpace. DeWolfe previously co-founded and led Jam City and MySpace while Whitcomb previously served as CTO at Jam City and MySpace.
Jam City is known for mobile games based on IPs including Harry Potter, Family Guy, and Jurassic Park. The game studio has seven top-grossing titles, over 30 million monthly active users and billions of downloads. MySpace, founded in 2003, was one of the first social networks to reach millions of users globally.
With their shared track record in game development and social media, Brooks, DeWolfe, and Whitcomb founded Plai Labs to build the next generation of social platforms leveraging web3 and generative AI technology.
The company’s first product is ‘Champions Ascension’, an MMORPG where players can port their existing NFT characters into the game which is currently in beta and open to NFT holders. Players can go on quests, trade items, fight in the colosseum, build their own custom dungeons and more.
Plai Labs is also building an AI protocol that allows creators to train sets of data and create user-generated content (UGC) using 2D to 3D asset rendering to generate NFT images for use in Champion’s Ascension.
As Stable Diffusion, DALL-E and Midjourney are fueling the adoption of AI-generated visual art, Plai Labs is capitalising on the AI trend by building a number of products to “turbo charge the space.”
“We love this intersection where AI connects with and inspires creators,” Plai Labs wrote in a blog post. “You didn’t have to be a coder to use MySpace. Just a passion-powered creator. And we unlocked the power of mobile phones to create super gaming devices for playing with friends around the globe. Now with Plai Labs, we’re combining some of those same ethos to merge social and entertainment together on a new stage — one that allows users to experience new models of ownership, community, monetization and content creation.”
Following the departure of Jam City co-founders Chris DeWolfe and Aber Whitcomb, the game studio has appointed its chief operating officer and president Josh Yguado to the role of CEO. Yguado is also a co-founder of Jam City.
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