Phynd raises $10M for subscription-free smart TV cloud gaming platform

Phynd has raised $10 million for its subscription-free smart TV cloud gaming platform. And it comes from an entrepreneur with an interesting pedigree.

Cofounded by tech and media innovator André Swanston, Stamford, Connecticut-based Phynd (pronounced “find”) is poised to make high-quality gaming universally accessible by offering a free-to-play experience on smart TVs and other connected devices.

“Phynd is a subscription-free gaming platform built for smart TVs. It will be available across all devices, but smart TVs is our area of focus,” said Swanston, the former CEO of data analytics for streaming services firm Tru Optik, in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat.

Wellington Management led the oversubscribed round, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Connecticut Innovations Fund and Jozy Altidore. The substantial seed investment will fuel Phynd’s continued development and its highly anticipated 2025 beta launch, he said.

Over the past five years, more than 500 million smart TVs capable of supporting a cloud gaming app have shipped globally, far outpacing the combined total of gaming PCs and consoles. This massive installed base sets the stage for Phynd’s disruptive entry into the market, he said.

Cloud gaming allows consumers to enjoy video games on any internet-connected device, eliminating the need for expensive gaming hardware while keeping games up to date.

Advances in cloud-computing technology and the proliferation of high-speed internet are driving this market, which is projected to grow at a staggering 38% compound annual rate from 2024 to 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights.

Cloud gaming also opens up a tremendous new advertising opportunity for brands. Currently, video games played on a TV or large screen generate only about 7% of their revenue from ads or sponsors, compared to 50% for the broader media sector. 

Phynd connects brand marketers with the elusive big-screen gaming audience through non-intrusive audience-based ads and sponsorships, addressing a longstanding marketing challenge while boosting industry revenues amid rising costs.

For consumers, Phynd offers a compelling value proposition: subscription-free access to high-quality games on devices they already own, unlike other gaming platforms that charge up to $30/month.

Origins

Swanston previously revolutionized targeted advertising across smart TVs and smart speakers as the CEO and cofounder of Tru Optik before its nine-figure acquisition. He sees a similar trajectory for Phynd.

“A decade ago, many experts claimed subscription streaming services would be the end of TV advertising,” Swanston said. “Today, advertising is set to become the largest revenue source for streaming TV. Consumers love free content, and an advertising-sponsored gaming platform done right is a win for everyone.”

In 2013, Swanston previously founded Tru Optik, a data and analytics company focused on connected TV (CTV) and streaming media. It was just in time for the era of streaming media, and Tru Optik was acquired by TransUnion in 2020 for over $100 million when Swanston was under 40. Now he is funding Phynd on his own.

“I’ve always been bullish on what the future for gaming would be on smart TVs. And the reason for starting Phynd is seeing this culmination of more people having smart TVs hooked up to broadband internet that have the capacity to support gaming,” he said.

He noted that people have subscription fatigue when it comes to paid streaming services or video game services.

“We’re just seeing the explosion in the growth of ad -supported solutions,” he said. “And so it just felt like the timing was right for a differentiated solution like this — a different ad experience.”

His first rule? He said, “You can’t have a gaming platform or gaming experience without great games. So obviously, I would say it’s very important. But I think a couple things that I would call out relative to other solutions — the other gaming platforms or cloud gaming platforms or are coming from legacy services — is the others are trying to diversify or mitigate revenue loss or market share loss.”

Phynd will make gaming accessible to hundreds of millions of TV consumers who don’t own gaming consoles. At the same time, Phynd’s analytic and marketing tools enable studios and publishers to engage and retain these potential gaming audiences more efficiently than across legacy distribution methods.

“We’re excited to support the Phynd team in reshaping the gaming experience, and creating powerful new opportunities for players and developers,” said Jackson Cummings, Head of Wellington Access Ventures, in a statement.  “We expect André and his team to leverage their disruptive experience with connected TV in the gaming sector.”

“Phynd will not only make gaming more accessible to players without consoles and gaming PCs but also create new exciting opportunities for developers and advertisers,” said Elliott Robinson, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “We are excited to support this new chapter in cloud gaming”

Players in the U.S. can now sign up for the beta waitlist at Phynd.Games. He said the cloud gaming solutions on smart TVs have been secondary in nature, and some are just portals to access games, whether it’s games you already own or can stream or are available for purchase.

“There’s really no larger experience social engagement, no enhanced discovery,” he said. “That kind of model has not really evolved to meet the opportunity of the medium of smart TVs. And so I would say one of the big differentiators about us is going to be a real experience for the gamer and community, not just the ability to stream your games.”

The other thing is that Phynd will be agnostic. The goal is to help publishers and studios better reach more players and monetize their content — and help players more easily discover and find content and community.

“We don’t develop or produce our own games, so there’s never this conflict of interest, right? Other big platforms, whether it’s Xbox or Sony or Valve, are also competing with the very publishers and studios that they’re that they’re distributing,” he said.

Going after partnerships

The company will have partnerships with smart TV makers, but it’s not announcing any today. Swanston said that will likely happen this spring in terms of unveiling TV makers and publishers/developers. He said he is going after every TV maker, operating system or OEM partner, ad tech partner and ad-supported streaming solution on TVs.

“I’m really excited to be able to leverage some long standing relationships, both at the OEM level as well as the ad tech level and the content level as we as we roll out,” he said.

With the wave of streaming services, the cost per session or cost per hour has dramatically fallen over the last four or five years, Swanston said. That’s also true for games.

“The proliferation of high-speed broadband internet has grown significantly. One of the big concerns that everybody had in the past was whether there going to be enough broadband, enough spectrum to be able to stream in 1080p. Now HD streaming is in 10 million homes concurrently and we’re in 4K across hundreds of millions of homes globally. That is no longer an issue.”

On top of that, Comcast just announced it is rolling out its lag-free gaming technology to millions of people on its network for no additional cost to its subscribers.

“You’ll continue to see more announcements of that type. Comcast was a big client and partner of Tru Optik across many different services,” he said.

For games, he said the capacity and the potential is much more viable with the opportunity for broadband-based cloud gaming apps on smart TVs.

“When you talk about more capacity and broader potential distribution, that’s a big difference that even 36 months ago you couldn’t have said was there,” he said. “When we look at kind of advertising on the large screen — like gaming PCs, or with smart TVs in their home, hooked up the consoles or what have you — only about 7% of that revenue comes from brand-sponsored media consumption. It could be advertising, could be sponsored quests, sponsored items or experiences, but when you look at the overall media industry, it’s closer to 50%.”

Streaming TV will be followed by streaming games?

Netflix led the way in subscription revenue to streaming TV. But in the next year or so, Swanston believes more than half of revenue on streaming TV will come from advertising.

“All the real growth has been in the free, ad-supported streaming solutions. That’s what OEMs are relying on to make margins on their TVs. They make nothing from selling the TVs. It’s all the free ad-supported. Every time a console is hooked up to a smart TV and somebody’s gaming on a console, that OEM is losing money because they’re don’t have an opportunity to show to an (ad-supported) show. There’s no value in that for them.”

But young folks in particular are gravitating to games far more than their elders. Brands and other advertisers have to figure out how to reach them, and it’s clear it has to be through games.

“It’s kind of critical, frankly, for the survival of the industry to be able to engage consumers across gaming,” Swanston said. “Where people have failed before is gamers don’t want an intrusive advertising experience. Nobody wants you to pause their game in the middle of their game and force an ad in it. No one wants their session length to be limited where, you can only play for half an hour because we need to show you more ads. So I think the experiences have been very clunky.”

He said there hasn’t been an ability to do the same level of targeting and measurement and attribution in terms of advertising across gaming that average that that brands are used to across streaming or digital or linear television.

“My last company patented the concept of a household graph and the ability to do that data-driven engagement across smart TVs. I feel like we will be best in class at that pretty early on in making sure that it’s a non-intrusive experience,” he said.

Over the last 24 months, the experience of cloud gaming has gotten better than it was, Swanston said. When Google Stadia came out, the experience was pretty bad. There was no alternative 5G on Wi-Fi solution, most people in the U.S. didn’t have fast enough broadband either.

“They were just ahead of their time,” he said. “Now the experience is much better.”

He noted that the time that it takes for the game to load before you get into the game — that’s when you can see a brand sponsorship or some sort of messaging and sponsored experiences.

“Those are the ways that we’re making the economics of this work,” he said. “The value proposition to game members is a lot better. we make sure that there’s value for everybody across the ecosystem. We believe that there’s opportunity for publishers and studios to diversify their revenue streams and not be reliant on just either charging for the game itself or for the items in the game.”

He added, “We also know that that the OEM partners are extremely reliant on ways to be able to monetize the media that’s consumed on their on their devices. We also want to make sure that we’re providing opportunities and value for players and indie developers and so forth. We’re not in a situation where we are trying to make money and not bring value back into the ecosystem.”

The competition

He noted that the Samsung Gaming Hub on a smart Samsung TV means that players can play high-end console and PC games on a big-screen TV without owning a console. But he noted that these are paid subscription services available for the most part. With Phynd, you don’t have to already be a gamer, he said.

As far as the number of games available at launch, Swanston expects it could be in the hundreds, as those are the numbers for some of the largest leaders in the market today.

Swanston has no plans to ship his own set-top box, smart TV or console.

“We just want to make it readily, easily accessible through devices people already own. So smart TV is where we believe that we can be a best in class solution, for people’s convenience, that want to continue the gaming experience,” he said. “Whether it’s on desktop or mobile, we will have the ability to do so there, but really that’s more to continue the experience. We want to be the first real solution, to really focus on smart TV and not make smart TV just an ancillary distribution point.”

One of the questions is where the new smart TV players will get their controllers. With casual games, the neophyte players can use remote controls for the TVs. They can also use their smartphones. And they may need to get their hands on an actual controller, but that’s not an expensive barrier, Swanston said.