hello and thanks for tuning in i'm holly shields for kalkine media and welcome to
another edition of executive corner expert talks today i'll be shedding light on irreverent labs
a company that's reinventing how games are played owned and watched by merging advanced
machine learning engaging gameplay and a blockchain tech and joining us today to
share their insights is ceo rahul sood rahul thanks very much for joining us on the show today
thank you for having me it's a pleasure to have you on now first and foremost let's
talk a mecca fight club it's looking incredible so far with lots of hype from the gaming space
and congratulations on the 40 million raised for it last month that is an amazing feat
how is that funding being used and what stage of developments is the game at at the moment
um yeah so we um my my partner and i started started irreverent labs sometime late last year
around september um and uh we've been building this uh this this incredible game uh that's it's
like a fighting game where every every character in the game is an artificially intelligent npc
uh living on the blockchain as an nft and um and and really like we're we're a deep tech company
building deep technology around this this video game that we're creating um and uh we've we've
made a lot of traction so so basically in the last month um month or so we were approached by our
lead vc who you know was looking for an update and we shared where we were we shared our
our roadmap the technology we're building and the size of our community as it continues to grow
and they felt that there was sort of no need to wait we can just you know continue to raise the
money that we need to to keep going and and build so we raised another 40 million dollars total of
45 um and the development of the game is going really well that's incredible and great to hear
it does sound like a major project there and lots of people are taking notice it's getting a lot of
traction as you just said so congratulations on that front and as you said as well you did only
start late last year i believe which you know you've seen some incredible growth so far and
such tremendous success since that time have you achieved all this in such a short span um you
know i i i'll i'll just say that uh the market is amazing you know i've been in the gaming industry
most or all of my career really i've had multiple companies in the gaming space my last company was
an esports uh betting company uh that got acquired by entain and uh it was it was it was the largest
esports betting company in the world it was called unicorn and my partner who joined me um we used to
work together at microsoft we started microsoft ventures together and we worked there for a few
years um and then and then he he went off into the venture space and started making investments of
his own and we got back together last year uh just to talk about the future where things are going
and um you know i shared this this kind of really ridiculous idea i had for a video game you know
i always say jokingly it's the dumbest idea i've ever had but it's uh it's pretty amazing uh and he
he brought in this this vision of ai and machine learning to it because that's his expertise um and
uh and and how we've made so how we've grown so quickly or made so much traction is really in the
fact that we hired people that we've worked with in the past people that we're very familiar with
um that are you know like superstars and what they do you know we hired the best creative artist we
could um you know cinematics music storytelling all of that we put it together in this you know
this amazing company and uh we just we just started building right well it sounds like you've
got a very solid framework there and a great team to back you up so it has been an incredible
journey by the sounds of it and we definitely look forward to seeing everything you have
coming up now in your opinion i'd love to know how exactly is blockchain tech transforming the entire
gaming industry uh well that's a really good question because like i would say that you know
it's still very early um and and i think the the better question would be how how can it transform
the industry because at the moment there's a lot of speculation uh you know there's a lot
of nfts being dropped and that sort of thing and really the market is driven by um mostly
speculators who really don't care about you know the games or the things that are being produced
however um the promise of blockchain is super interesting so the way the way we're applying
it is you know we're creating these characters that are individually unique beautifully created
characters with their own individual personalities that are driven by ai and the user owns those
characters which is different than any game that you've seen it's never happened like this before
where users actually own the characters in the game and they're all individuals
so we're building a a game with deep storytelling a really amazing economy and um and and an amazing
technology layer that will allow people to have an emotional bond with the characters that they own
there's nothing like this that's ever been done before so you know it's i it's going
to sound ridiculous but we're building a mecha [ __ ] fighting game you know where these these
roosters and hands hatch out of eggs and uh and you own those um you know you own those characters
and um and and i think the key is that emotional connection that we're creating
between the players and their characters will make this game super interesting and very engaging
that is awesome to hear i don't doubt that i mean it's a great idea i must say um it looks
like it'll be a great game as well and um i think you're absolutely on the money there when you say
that the way ownership as we know it in games is completely changing with a blockchain tech
so that is uh great to see and it's great to see as well that deep connection i think between
players and characters that's really being fleshed out with this technology so overall very good to
see there and you know i'd just love to know what are your plans going forward for irreverent labs
in the upcoming year and near future yeah look you know we're we're 100 focused on building
mecha fight club um this is this is the game that we're building irreverent labs as i mentioned is
a deep tech company uh building really great technology around ai and machine learning
uh and we're building software to build automated pipelines for game developers we're basically
building a game that any other game studio would require 200 people we're doing it with 20 people
um and and and really good software and and so um so you know our plan is to continue building this
and stay 100 focused on building and launching a series of experiences around mecha fight club
and um it's going to be interesting to see to see where it goes because we're a web 3 game studio
and we're very um open to you know all kinds of um uh sort of industries coming into the space like
for example you know we're building this uh this this mecha [ __ ] fighting game with the global
community we've got people all over the world that are really into what we're building right now
and we've had many industry players in that in the wagering business contact us because that was
my previous business asking if at any point in time will we open this up to wagering companies
and and the answer is yeah like we'll do it but we won't we won't take bats ourselves what we'll do
is we'll we'll license the technology the vision uh we'll give them odds and and all the streams
and and the data that they need to to operate in a in a regulated environment on their platforms
um and i think this is kind of the future of where entertainment is going
that's amazing to hear it sounds like you've got an expansion in the works
from the sounds of it across sectors and i'm sure we'll be seeing plenty more projects
from you as well in the near future so all around really exciting stuff and uh great to see but with
that said thanks very much for coming on the show today and sharing that with us it's been
really great to have you on executive corner expert talks thanks for having me appreciate
it pleasure to have you on thanks for your time as well viewers if you've just joined us that was
rahul sood the ceo of irreverent labs doing some incredible work in this space so do keep an eye
out and if you missed any part of the chat you can catch the full interview on our youtube channel at
kalkine media i'm holly shields reminding you to stay apprised and invest wise with kalkine.