Guilded raises $7 million for gaming chat platform

Guilded has raised $7 million to build what it calls the “ultimate chat platform for gaming communities.” It sounds a bit like rival chat platform Discord to me, but the San Francisco company has convinced some veteran investors to give it money.

Matrix Partners led the round, with participation from Initialized Capital, Susa Ventures, and Sterling.VC. Ilya Sukhar, a general partner at Matrix Partners, joined the Guilded board.

Guilded will use the capital to expand the company’s team, build out features and functionality, and create strategic partnerships with top games publishers and developers as well as esports teams and organizations.

Guilded has already built features for gaming communities into the platform, including voice and video chat, group calendars, and scheduling tools. In June, Guilded will launch its tournaments feature.

CEO Eli Brown, a former pro gamer who previous was part of Instagram’s growth team and Microsoft’s Xbox division, founded Guilded in 2017. It serves professional esports teams and over 50,000 high school, collegiate, casual and semi-pro teams. The company has 15 employees.

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, managing partner at Initialized Capital, said in a statement that he wishes Guilded was around when he was a teenager playing with an Everquest Guild. He said he is excited to support them on the next phase of their journey as they start to support tournaments, voice, video and more.

In an email, Guilded said the big difference between Guilded and other platforms is that it is built from the ground up with gaming needs in mind (calendar/scheduling functionality, direct channels to games, unique features to support guilds, just to name a few).
Guilded will be available through web browser but also as apps for Windows and Mac OSX as well as Google Play for Android devices and App Store for iPhone.