Oslo-based PortalOne, which is building a “hybrid” gaming platform, raises a $60M Series A led by Tiger Global, following a $15M seed in April 2021
Gaming has been one of the most popular entertainment categories in the last two years of pandemic living.
Context & Ripple Effects
PortalOne's hybrid gaming/TV app has moved fast through the 2021 capital boom: the Oslo-based company raised a $15M seed from Atari, Founders Fund and Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin in April, and nine months later Tiger Global leads a $60M Series A. The raise lands in the middle of a funding surge — VC-backed gaming companies had already pulled in $5.9B in 2021, surpassing the totals of 2020 and 2019 combined.
First-order effects
- PortalOne gets the capital to push its hybrid gaming/TV show app out of closed beta and into production, with a war chest four times its seed round.
- Tiger Global extends its COVID-era investment pace into gaming, adding PortalOne to a portfolio that already spans Cerebras, Nothing and Revolut secondaries.
Second-order effects
- The round feeds an arms race among platform-style gaming startups — Mythical Games raised $150M at a $1.25B valuation months earlier, and Elodie Games took a $32.5M Series A — forcing later entrants like Grand Games to raise bigger rounds to compete for talent and distribution.
- Tiger Global's aggressive check-writing across gaming and consumer tech is the same behavior sources later tied to a rapid creation of billion-dollar startups, inflating valuations across the category.
Third-order effects
- If the 2021 pattern holds, the gaming platforms funded at boom valuations face a repricing reckoning — the same dynamic that later saw Tiger Global cut Superhuman's valuation by 45% in September 2023.
- Capital concentrates in fewer, larger platform bets rather than single-title studios, pushing hybrid formats like PortalOne's toward becoming the category's default structure.
The trend: Tiger Global's COVID-era blitz is accelerating a gaming funding cycle in which hybrid platform startups raise nine-figure rounds — and the same concentration sets up the correction that follows.