Minit Games, a startup focused on AI and feed-based gaming discovery, has raised $2 million in a pre-seed funding round.
LVP and Sony Innovation Fund led the round, with participation from prominent industry angels including Stefan Klemm, Timo Soininen, and Klaas Kersting.
Minit Games is building the infrastructure for “instant play.” While digital distribution has
historically relied on static storefronts and long downloads, Minit Games introduces a personalized, algorithmically driven feed of bite-sized HTML5 games that load instantly,
erasing the boundaries between exploration and play.
“Players live in algorithmic feeds, but games are still trapped in stores,” said Ole
Schaper, cofounder of Minit Games, in a statement. “We’re building a destination where short form games are as easy to discover and engage with as any other modern media
format. We aren’t just showing clips; we are delivering the full, interactive experience immediately.”
A Unified Ecosystem for Creators
Minit Games serves as an open layer for the next generation of game developers. Whether built via emerging AI tools or established HTML5-compatible engines, creators can publish
directly to the feed in real time.
Powering this ecosystem is an AI-driven discovery engine. By analyzing real-time user signals and engagement patterns, Minit Games’ recommendation algorithm ensures that creator content is precision-matched with the right audience, maximizing reach for developers and relevance for players.
Schaper said in a message to GamesBeat that the firm is focused on mobile-first on iOS and Android, with a web player as well. Because Minits are HTML5, they run anywhere.
“Beyond our own app, we’re also embedding Minits directly into platforms like Telegram and Discord, so players can jump into a game instantly without downloading anything,” he said.
Strategic Roadmap
The $2M round will support the expansion of the Hamburg-based team and accelerate the
platform’s technical rollout. Minit Games is currently preparing for its invite-only early Alpha launch.
“At LVP, we look for teams that are not just building games, but are fundamentally
evolving the way people interact with them,” said Are Mack Growen, general partner at LVP, in a statement. “Minit Games is solving the discoverability crisis by meeting players exactly where they spend their time: in the feed. By removing the friction between discovery and play, Minit Games is opening up a massive new frontier for both creators and players alike.”
“The shift toward feed-native, instant-access content is a global trend that has finally reached its turning point in gaming. Minit Games’ approach through their AI-driven discovery engine offers a persuasive solution for an audience that demands immediacy. We are excited to support Minit Games as they build the infrastructure for the next generation of short-form interactive entertainment,” said Antonio Avitabile, managing director at Sony Ventures EMEA, in a statement.
Minit Games is an open platform for short-form play. It turns bite-sized games and interactive challenges into daily, instantly playable moments designed for quick discovery and easy sharing. Minit Games is based in Hamburg, Germany.
Origins
Minit Games was started in August 2025 and it has five people, with plans to grow to 10 to 12 people over the next year.
Asked about the inspiration, Schaper said in a message to GamesBeat, “To be successful today, games have to demand undivided attention. Service games need to retain their players for months and years. Even hypercasual games must retain players for weeks to be profitable. That kills creativity and market variety.”
Schaper added, “Gaming is in an attention war with every other form of media, and it’s losing. Every other format like video, music, or social, has adapted by moving to algorithmic feeds and short-form content because that fits how people consume media today. Players live in feeds all day, but games are still trapped behind store pages, downloads, and wait times. The data supports this: hypercasual was the only game model to post download growth in 2025, with time spent surging even in mature markets like the US, Japan, and Western Europe.”
At the same time, AI tools make it possible for anyone to create a playable experience in hours, and we’re already seeing viral, meme-driven games blow up overnight. The current app stores simply weren’t designed for that velocity, Schaper said.
“We built Minit to be the feed-first destination where short-form games are as easy to discover and play as a short-form video, allowing creators to publish short, quirky ideas in real time and letting us find an audience for them. We want to create a breathing, living ecosystem for new game ideas,” Schaper said.
Game discovery
Regarding game discovery’s difficulties, Schaper said it’s a winner-takes-all market with massive barriers to entry. According to Sensor Tower’s State of Mobile 2026 report, the top 1% of publishers captured 92% of all in-app purchase revenue and 81% of downloads in 2025. For new creators and smaller studios, there’s essentially no organic path to visibility in the current store model.
“The bigger picture is just as telling. Mobile game downloads actually fell in 2025, even as revenue grew slightly,” Schaper said. “The market is shifting from acquiring new users to squeezing more value from existing ones. If the industry wants to return to growth, it needs to make it easier for people to find and play games. That means removing friction, making discovery interesting again, and using AI to serve the right content to the right users, designed for a generation that expects content to come to them, not the other way around.”
Regarding AI, Schaper said there are two sides to it. On discovery, because each Minit is a short loop of roughly 60 seconds, users interact with a high volume of content every day. Every signal, whether someone skips, plays through, shares, or replays, feeds the recommendation engine in real time. That frequency of data is what makes personalization powerful, he said.
“On the creation side, we’re an open platform. Creators can publish using any tool that exports to HTML5, whether that’s a professional engine or one of the emerging AI coding tools,” Schaper said. “We’re not building a locked editor. We’re building the distribution and discovery layer, and we want creators to use whatever they already love so they can focus on building great content. We will also provide optional AI tooling to help creators adapt to our platform, making it even easier to publish Minits.”