2022 – 2025 · Sydney → Gurgaon
Nucanon
AI-powered narrative design for game studios. The first gaming acquisition between Australia and India.
$770K
Raised
15K
Demo Users
100M+
Zupee Users
The Story
The Problem
AAA game franchises cost over $1 billion to produce. Writing teams spend 35% of their workload on lore mapping and world-building — the structural grunt work of connecting storyline nodes. Smaller studios can't compete without 30-person writing teams.
The Product
Nucanon was an AI-powered narrative design platform — a lore engine for game studios. LLMs for content generation, node-based interface for branching narratives, vector databases for lore consistency.
The vision: become the "GitHub for lore" — not just a text generator, but a platform that genuinely understood story structure.
"The holy grail of interactive entertainment is true player agency within a compelling story. This is the challenge that has stumped the industry for decades."
The Journey
Started as Bounti in 2022 — a crowdsourced game testing platform. After Antler, pivoted to AI narrative design and rebranded as Stori. Jason Calacanis invested through Founder University after seeing 15,000 demo users.
Selected for AWS Generative AI Accelerator (one of 10 across ANZ), reached a16z SPEEDRUN finals, won both Judges Choice and Audience Choice at Fishburners. $500K seed from Skalata in May 2024 brought total raised to $770K.
The Acquisition
In December 2024, Zupee — a gaming platform with 100M+ users — issued a term sheet. In July 2025, the acquisition closed. It was the first gaming M&A between Australia and India.
"We believe the Pixar of the next century won't emerge through traditional film, but through an interactive mix of videos and games. And we're going to build it from India for the world."
Timeline
Founded Bounti — crowdsourced game testing platform
Pivoted to AI narrative design. Antler pre-seed.
Jason Calacanis invested after 15,000 demo users
Futureverse Base Camp — 7 from 500 applicants
AWS Generative AI Accelerator. a16z SPEEDRUN finals.
Closed $500K seed from Skalata. Total: $770K.
Zupee issues term sheet
Acquisition closes. Team relocates to Gurgaon.