London-based ManaMind has raised $1.5 million in a pre-seed funding round to advance its AI-driven game testing
platform. The round was led by Sure Valley Ventures, with participation from
EWOR, Ascension, SyndicateRoom, and Heartfelt.
Founded by Emil Kostadinov and
Sabtain Ahmad, ManaMind is developing autonomous AI agents designed to replace
repetitive manual quality assurance (QA) processes in game development. As
games grow in scale and complexity, testing has become an increasingly
resource-intensive part of production, often requiring significant time and
cost to ensure a polished player experience.
The company’s system
continuously plays through games to detect bugs, generating actionable reports
and enabling teams to focus on resolving issues rather than documenting them.
By running testing in parallel with development, the platform aims to support
faster release cycles and improve overall software quality.
Emil Kostadinov, CEO and
co-founder of ManaMind, said that game development should prioritise human
creativity over repetitive testing tasks:
We’re automating the manual,
time-consuming parts so studios can focus on building amazing worlds. We’ve
developed our own proprietary visual model specifically for virtual
environments because gaming demands that level of precision. Gaming is our
launchpad, but our vision is to build the autonomous testing layer for all
software and, ultimately, robotics.
ManaMind has already
established design partnerships with Included Games and Crazy Labs, reflecting
early demand for AI-native testing infrastructure within the global games
industry.
The funding will be used to
expand the company’s technical team, accelerate development of its proprietary
models, and support growth across key markets. While gaming is its initial
focus, ManaMind aims to extend its autonomous testing approach to broader
software and robotics applications over time.