The next puzzle game eating up your commute may be coming out of Bengaluru, and it may have been tested, tuned and scaled with help from AI. Spill Games, a two-year-old mobile studio, has raised $10.5 million (about ₹100 crore) in a Series A round led by Elevation Capital.

Existing investors Centre Court Capital and PeerCapital also joined the round, Inc42 reported. The raise comes roughly six months after Spill closed a $3.1 million seed round in April, a fast follow-on that signals strong early traction.

An AI-Led, Portfolio-Driven Studio

Founded in 2024 by Om Misra, Tapan Ranjan and Harsh Garg, Spill builds free-to-play casual, puzzle and hybrid-casual titles for a global audience. Its portfolio includes Cozy Finds, Sticker by Number, Zen Math Crossword, Bird Rescue Jam and Grill Master, monetized through advertising and in-app purchases.

"We started Spill because we love making and playing games," Misra told DealStreetAsia. The business model, however, is built on discipline rather than passion alone. Spill launches games quickly to test assumptions, then uses player feedback and in-game data to decide which titles deserve more investment and which get cut.

The Compass Engine

At the center of that process is Compass, Spill's in-house engine that brings together tools for analytics, player retention, monetization and live operations. Because the infrastructure is reused across games, the studio says it can shorten development and testing cycles, targeting speeds roughly four times faster than traditional approaches.

That speed matters in casual mobile gaming, where hits are unpredictable and user acquisition costs can sink a studio that bets too heavily on any single title.

Built in India, Played in America

Spill is part of a new wave of Indian studios building for players overseas. At the time of its seed round, the company said about half of its users came from the United States, followed by Brazil and Japan. It previously set goals of testing more than 20 prototypes within 18 months and launching five to ten profitable titles.

The timing is notable. India's government has banned real-money gaming, pushing investor attention toward studios that earn money from ads and in-app purchases instead of wagers. Spill sits squarely in that safer lane.

Where the Money Goes

Spill plans to use the new capital to scale its existing games, expand its development pipeline, strengthen the AI and technology capabilities of Compass, acquire users and selectively grow its team.

For Elevation Capital, one of India's most active early-stage firms, the bet is that a data-driven studio can turn hit-making from luck into a repeatable system. If Spill pulls that off, the American players already making up half its audience will be the ones who notice first.

Source

Inc42 — "Spill Games Raises $10.5 Mn To Scale AI-Led Mobile Gaming Studio"