Warchief Gaming, a tabletop game developer started by two former Blizzard Entertainment executives, has raised $844,026 in the first two weeks of its month-long Kickstarter campaign.
Funds will support the Irvine-based company’s first game, called Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent, which is a campaign setting following the rules of the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons.
The game will take place in the fantasy world of Lawbrand, a confederation of eight cities of commerce. Players will have the ability to harness the power of Auroboros—a serpent consuming its own tail—which brings great strength and debilitating side effects, according to Warchief.
Chris Metzen, a former senior vice president of story and franchise development at Blizzard, is leading Warchief Gaming as creative director.
He is joined by co-founder and head of product and business development Mike Gilmartin, who was previously vice president of global quality assurance at Blizzard.
Warchief Gaming said it expects Auroboros to be delivered to backers in the first quarter of 2021.
CycleBoard Inc., the maker of an assortment of electric scooters, has exceeded its financing goal on crowdfunding platform StartEngine, raising $270,359 at a valuation of $12 million. The round is still open.
The Costa Mesa-based firm makes three-wheel scooters that it says are designed to reduce fall risk and give riders better control and maneuverability.
The company’s scooters, which feature dual front wheels and a single rear wheel, have a top speed of about 22 miles per hour and can run about 20 miles before recharging. Products retail for $1,499 and up.
Sales jumped 110% to over $2.4 million in 2020 from 2019.
The company has delivered 2,900 scooters and generated about $4.9 million in lifetime sales since its 2016 inception.
CycleBoard was launched by CEO Phillip LaBonty, a U.S. Army veteran and the former founder and CEO of Newport Beach-based finance company Your Lease Connection, which exceeded $40 million in annual sales before LaBonty departed.
ACQUISITION
PEAR Sports LLC of Newport Beach has acquired San Clemente-based Pilates Metrics on undisclosed terms.
Pilates Metrics developed digital tools that help pilates instructors track, chart, and share student progress. It is one of the first companies to monitor breathwork, body alignment, balance work, posture, and other metrics, it said.
The company’s platform will be integrated with PEAR Sports, which offers personalized fitness programs with audio and visual content on running, cycling, yoga and more to individual users and business clients.
“Empowering teachers, coaches, and building connectivity is key in today’s wellness world,” Joseph Quinn, founder and former CEO of Pilates Metrics, said in a statement.
“Together, we will be able to prescribe an adaptive regimen to optimize outcomes for musculoskeletal and neuromuscular disorders, preoperative conditioning, rehabilitation, athletic performance and more.”
The acquisition marks PEAR Sports’ third since 2020; the company acquired AI fitness program designer Performance Lab and exercise video maker Functional Solutions last year.
PEAR Sports has raised more than $15 million from investors and federal grant programs since its 2010 inception.
PARTNERSHIPS
Learn & Earn, a micro-investment app developed by Newport Beach-based Blast, recently formed a partnership with New York-based cryptocurrency exchange platform Gemini.
Gemini, founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, will sponsor lessons on the history of cryptocurrency, the different types of digital currency, and decentralized finance, among other topics.
Learn & Earn, which launched late last year, offers snack-size courses to students on a range of topics such as financial literacy, coding and storytelling. Students then invest their earnings in an investment account by selecting ETFs and up to 10 separate large cap stocks such as Apple and Tesla.
The educational platform is currently rolling out through national nonprofit Junior Achievement and its network of 5 million students.
Blast, a game-savings app developer started by Acorns co-founder Walter Cruttenden, raised a $4 million round of financing in mid-2020 for the launch of Learn & Earn in addition to a micro-investment feature for its own platform coming soon.
AONDevices Inc., an Irvine-based maker of ultra-low power, high-performance edge artificial intelligence processors, has licensed its technology to United Kingdom-based Dialog Semiconductor.
Benchmark testing performed by Dialog Semiconductor demonstrated the company’s AONVoice processors offered up to 90% accuracy in zero decibel SNR (signal-to-noise) ratio conditions.
“By adding artificial intelligence to our advanced wireless communication integrated circuits, it offers the potential for voice activity and hotword detection at the edge in headsets, remote controls and other applications where performance, high noise-resilience and battery lifetime are crucial,” Arend van der Weijden, vice president of wireless, audio and voice business unit at Dialog Semiconductor, said in a statement.
For example, AONDevices’ voice technology could be used to turn down the volume in a headset as an ambulance passes by, effectively alerting the headset user to noise in their surroundings.
AONDevices, founded in 2018 by former Qualcomm principal engineer Mouna Elkhatib, said its tool suite includes dataset augmentation, training and interference optimization to stimulate chip level behavior. In addition, each core can be configured for wake words, voice commands, sound events and context detection.
Irvine-based Global Telecom Engineering Corp., a manufacturer of modules for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, recently announced a distribution deal with Texas-based ISP Supplies.
Under the agreement, ISP Supplies will deliver Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) products to underserved communities in all 50 states.
CBRS is a band of radio-frequency spectrum that the Federal Communications Commission has set aside to provide fast, reliable, and accessible connectivity to an estimated 160 million Americans in communities that lack access to broadband internet.
“CBRS is a brave new world for connectivity and it’s no surprise all the biggest players are jumping in to buy spectrum, but the real untapped potential is in the products and deployment of the actual networks,” Ahmad Malkawi, chief executive of Global Telecom, said.
Global Telecom and ISP Supplies will focus on underserved areas in education and Native American communities, the companies said.
