Monkey Tilt Raises $30M to Combine Gambling with Entertainment, Backed by Pantera Capital

That includes Monkey Tilt, which combines entertainment with gambling, and on Wednesday announced it has raised $30 million in a Series A funding round led by Pantera Capital.

Monkey Tilt, an online casino that combines gambling with entertainment, has announced that it has raised $30 million in a Series A funding round.

The round was led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Alumni Ventures, Blockchange, Gaingels, Goodwater Capital, Mantis VC, and Valor Equity Partners.

Monkey Tilt was founded in 2022 by Sam Kiki, a Las Vegas native who has operated some of the largest casinos in the U.S.

The company's platform offers sports betting and casino games like blackjack, roulette, and slots, with poker and a crypto payment infrastructure coming soon.

Kiki told Fortune that he envisions users logging into Monkey Tilt and spending hours on the site, talking to friends and gambling together.

“You're gambling together. You're having fun the same way you would in Vegas,” he said.

In addition to being an online casino, Kiki also sees Monkey Tilt as an entertainment company.

The company is partnering with celebrities and influencers to create content that will drive users to its platform.

This is similar to the strategy used by online crypto casino Stake.com, which partners with influencers who promote the site to their users by gambling on their livestreams.

However, Kiki says that Monkey Tilt goes a step further, building its brand around these partnerships.

“We're going to partner with all the dopest streamers, the cultural icons, the coolest brands but on top of that, we need to make content with them,” he said.

The platform also has a chat function that allows users to communicate with each other while they gamble and donate a portion of their winnings to other users.

“We're very big on the integration of lots of social features. I think the gaming platform of the future looks much more socially immersive than the gaming platforms of the past,” Kiki said.

Monkey Tilt launched in March and has already reached a monthly betting volume of $200 million.

The company currently has 15 employees, but Kiki plans to use a large portion of the funding to pay for advertising and marketing.

He also plans to use the money to build out a tech team to maintain the platform.

Monkey Tilt is not the only online casino that is attracting VC interest.

In March, another site that also aims to provide an immersive gambling experience, MyPrize, raised $13 million across two funding rounds, valuing the company at $140 million.