Studio Atelico raises $5M to build the AI-first games studio
Generative games are coming...
The news!
We’re excited to announce Air Street Capital’s lead investment in Studio Atelico’s $5M Seed round, alongside friends including Chris Ré (Stanford), Thomas Wolf (Hugging Face), and Alex Ratner (Snorkel), to back a team on a mission to redefine the role of generative AI in games.
Founded by Piero Molino, Paul Szerlip, JP Chen, and Ennio De Nucci, Studio Atelico brings together deep experience in AI model development, on-device optimisation, and award-winning game design. The founders met through years of collaboration at Geometric Intelligence (acquired by Uber) and forming Uber AI Labs together, where they built state-of-the-art ML systems including Ludwig. After Uber, Piero spent some time with Chris Ré (which is how I met him!) and then went on to found AI startup Predibase, which was acquired by NYSE-listed Rubrik in June 2025. Meanwhile, JP went to Instagram/Meta to work on large-scale on-device inference and generative AI. Over in London, Ennio led game design for Creative Assembly’s Total War series, including the Warhammer trilogy and Three Kingdoms, which sold millions of copies worldwide.
Why now?
The next era of games will be defined by generative AI. Not as a bolt-on, but as a core game mechanic. Yet today’s AI-powered games face steep hurdles: API-based inference costs eat into margins, latency interrupts immersion, and developers have little control over model behaviour.
Studio Atelico’s answer is an on-device AI engine that gives developers and itself as a studio full control. The engine powers lifelike NPCs with rich dialogue, planning, and emergent behaviours, all without server latency or per-interaction costs. It integrates directly into major game engines like Unreal, Unity, and Godot. The result: richer worlds, deeper player engagement, and the economics to scale.
We’re especially excited by Atelico’s approach to build and launch its own games on top of this technology. Gaming is a hits-driven business, and the value of a unique capability is best realised when the team uses it to make genre-defining titles. The studio’s first releases will target high-growth mobile and cross-platform markets, with gameplay experiences impossible to deliver without this AI-first foundation.
Piero captures it well in his GamesBeat interview:
“The magic happens when AI stops being a gimmick and becomes the canvas for the entire game.”
We’re hiring!
With this round, Studio Atelico will scale its engineering and design teams, ship the first public version of its AI engine, and launch its debut titles. We’re proud to back them from the start and can’t wait to play what comes next.
You can read more in the company’s funding announcement and GamesBeat coverage.