Guha (left) and Karthik Bala are the founders of Velan Studios.
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Ex-Activision veterans raise $7 million for Velan Studios game startup

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Velan Studios, a game studio founded by two brothers who made big games for Activision, has raised $7 million in venture capital as it launches an effort to prototype new types of games on emerging platforms.

The amount of money suggests it’s still possible for seasoned teams to raise a big chunk of money from investors, particularly when the founders are putting in a lot of their own money. The biggest investor in the round is Velan Ventures, a fund started by Karthik and Guha Bala.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.