Kinoa, a Tel Aviv-based AI operating system for mobile app operations, has raised $10M in a funding round led by Transcend Fund, with participation from Sisu Game Ventures.
Founded by veterans of Playtika, Amazon, and Skai, the company gives gaming and consumer app companies the tools to engage, retain, and monetize users in real time using AI agents. The capital will be used to expand Kinoa’s predictive models and deploy a new generation of AI agents that automate mobile app operations.
Addressing The Market Opportunity
User acquisition costs in mobile have surged more than 40 percent while targeting efficiency has fallen, pushing the industry toward a retention economy where the ability to keep and monetize existing users matters more than acquiring new ones. At the same time, 78 percent of the top thousand mobile games are seeing revenue decline despite active live operations, a sign that manual engagement strategies are no longer sufficient at scale.
Kinoa was built for this environment, turning user data into real-time decisions and automating the actions that follow.
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How The Technology Works
The Startup operates across two layers. Its Intelligence Layer is a suite of predictive models that anticipates user behavior, identifying which users are likely to churn, which are likely to become high spenders, and which offer to surface to each segment before the signals become visible in revenue data. Its Execution Layer delivers on those predictions automatically, enabling dynamic and personalized in-app experiences, push notifications, real-time segmentation, and feature changes, all without code releases or app updates.
The combined system is designed to give a single operator the precision, speed, and output previously requiring a significantly larger team. Across its customer base, Kinoa reports consistently delivering over 25 percent in revenue lift.
Growth And Market Traction
Kinoa’s platform has powered experiences for hundreds of millions of end users across its customers’ apps. Customers include Playstudios, Playsimple, Modern Times Group, and GammaTime Shorts.
Or Reznitsky, General Manager of Tetris Block Party at Playstudios, described the results the company achieved using the platform: “Kinoa gave us the ability to reach every user with the right experience at the right moment through personalized messages, dynamic offers, real-time feature changes, all without touching a line of code. The impact was immediate and Kinoa helped us achieve a 31% revenue increase and a 46% lift in payer conversion.”
Expansion Plans
The $10M raise will fund the expansion of Kinoa’s predictive model capabilities and the development of a new generation of AI agents designed to automate a broader range of mobile app operations. The company’s goal is to extend the reach of its platform across gaming and consumer app companies globally.
Looking Ahead
Elias Sandler, Co-Founder and CEO of Kinoa, described the operational shift the platform enables: “78% of the top thousand mobile games are seeing revenue decline with active live ops. Kinoa gives teams predictive superpowers, knowing exactly who will churn or pay before the signals are even visible. By connecting this intelligence to real-time execution, we’re enabling a single operator to deliver the precision, speed, and revenue impact of a ten-person team using our AI-powered operating system.”
Andrew Sheppard, Managing Director at Transcend Fund, explained the investment rationale: “Most mobile teams have more user data than they can act on. Kinoa turns that data into real-time decisions and execution, which is why we see LiveOps moving from manual workflows to intelligent infrastructure and beyond.”
About Kinoa
Kinoa is the AI operating system for mobile app operations, headquartered in Tel Aviv. The platform gives product managers, CRM managers, and monetization teams the tools to run real-time engagement, retention, and monetization operations without code changes or app releases. Founded by veterans of Playtika, Amazon, and Skai, Kinoa has powered experiences for hundreds of millions of end users across its customers’ applications.
