Fantasy Chess founder Magnus Carlsen and CEO Mats André Kristiansen have powerful backers to push a new fantasy and streaming startup in chess.Norway-based Fantasy Chess has raised pre-seed funding without a product from investors SNÖ Ventures, Coatue and funds led by billionaires Yuri Milner and Peter Thiel.
After testing a fantasy game with Norway Chess at its tournament last May, Fantasy Chess now hopes to open up the board beyond that genre, in which fans typically select players to fill out a team and receive points based on their performance in real-life matches. All those possibilities are another way to say that Fantasy Chess is a novice, even for a startup. It has launched no official product, and has just six employees. But it’s looking to capitalize on a bright moment for chess in pop culture, from Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit” show to the rise of popular streamers like U.S. grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, who boasts 1.9 million followers on the viewing service Twitch.
So Carlsen was a free agent fantasy enthusiast in 2023 when, as Ding Liren defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi, he teamed up with Norway Chess and a startup studio, Iterate, to launch a business called Pawn focused around fantasy chess,On the heels of that trial, Carlsen and his team decided to formalize Pawn as a more traditional startup and raise outside funding. Pawn became Fantasy Chess, with a refreshed cap table and a tech veteran CEO.
At this point, the investors are mostly betting on Carlsen and Kristiansen, said SNÖ Ventures partner Magne Uppman. “We look for teams and founders with unfair advantages, and this is such an unfair advantage with their combined backgrounds,” Uppman said.
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