Why is Capital Flowing into Mobile Startups Increasing?

Startup investments reached an all-time high of $2.6 billion in 2024. Mobile game studios and AI applications received the heaviest share of the funds.

Game Studios at the Center of Funds

According to KPMG's first quarter 2025 report, the total volume, consisting of 59 separate transactions, reached $70.2 million. More than a third of the funds, $24.5 million, flowed into game studios, while fintech came in second with $23.4 million; SaaS lagged far behind with $10 million.

Zynga’s $1.8 billion payment for Peak Games in 2020 and Rollic Games’ $168 million sale fuel this interest. Dream Games’ Royal Match alone generates $1.4 billion in annual revenue while maintaining over 50 million monthly active users; still, matching games and casino-style apps such as BizBet casino show that subscription mobile platforms continue to offer substantial room for expansion and innovation

Good Job Games’ story is a point of reference for funding. Ilker Ilıcalı and Nazım Akmandil achieved 1.84 billion downloads in eight years without external funding, and sold Zen Match to Moon Active after transitioning from hyper-casual to matchmaking. Match Villains, having captured strong retention metrics, raised $23 million in a seed round from Menlo Ventures and Arcadia, and $60 million in Series A with the addition of Anthos Capital.

Grand Games, with only 14 employees, closed a $30 million Series A round in nine months under Balderton’s leadership. Goodwater Capital invested $25 million in Bigger Games, and Bitkraft Ventures invested $7.25 million in Circle Games. 

How Sustainable Are Matchmaking Games?

When fifteen teams repeat the same formula, will the category remain the same, or will it break down and each transform into something different?

Good Job Games, Grand Games, Bigger Games – they all entered through the same door at the same time. Funds also poured money through the same door. Royal Match already captures a large segment of the market with 50 million monthly active users; the rest will either compete for crumbs or produce something different enough to broaden the definition of the category.

Most funds are looking for repeatability, not boldness – when an investor says "proven model," the studio tends to copy; but as it copies, its market share shrinks. Then there's the issue of user acquisition costs. In the hyper-casual era, attracting a user cost pennies; now it's a few dollars.

Studios are getting investment with the narrative of organic growth, but how will discoverability be solved without a marketing budget? Perhaps the first one to catch the big breakthrough will win, or perhaps the category will become so crowded that a mid-range revenue model becomes the norm instead of a breakthrough – nobody knows.

The Trench Problem in AI Applications

Codeway reaching over 300 million users in five years and a 5,825% revenue growth suggests the model works – but there's a gap between saying "it works" and saying "it's sustainable."

Most AI applications use the same infrastructure – the APIs of major language models. As the technical gap narrows, competition shifts elsewhere, but where it will shift is unclear.

Chat & Ask AI and Wonder AI Art Generator are high on iOS lists because Codeway entered early. Every new application that comes after wraps the same API with a different interface.

Is the behavioral data collected from 300 million users by the company, which is featured in the Forbes Startup 50 and LinkedIn Top Startups lists, an advantage, or an illusion that will evaporate when model providers release their own end-user products?

• With over two hundred investments made by TÜBİTAK BiGG in 2024, we see that public financing is now serving as direct seed capital, going beyond the grant model.

• In the first quarter of 2025, 12 transactions in fintech outpaced 9 transactions in AI – not all the money is flowing into AI, funds are still diversifying.

• The funny thing is, we never found out how much of the $2.3 billion in venture capital invested in the last five years has been returned;

• The addition of 136 new funds to the pool in 2024 generated some excitement, but where are the real results?

• The transition cycle from hyper-casual to matchmaking, and from matchmaking to AI, is getting shorter – whether it's a maturation or impatience, there's no definitive answer to that either.

As the Store Monopoly Breaks, the Distribution Equation Changes

When Google Play adopted a strict policy against low-quality apps in 2024, the number of new apps on the platform dropped by 60 percent. A strict quality filter is a good thing – but is the shift of developers to alternative channels an unexpected side effect, or a loss that Google anticipated from the start?

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) legitimized this shift. The regulation, which opened the door to web-based stores outside of Apple and Google, allowed for bypassing store commissions. Android users can access the applications from outside the store via bizbet indir pages in APK format; the update cycle is also entirely in the developer's hands.

But there's a paradox here: store diversity reduces risk while fragmenting the user experience. Different stores, different versions, different update schedules – how sustainable this is for the user is debatable.