St. John’s-based trophi.ai has raised a $3.3 million seed round led by Halifax venture capital fund Build Ventures and plans to use the money to hire 10 to 15 people, with a test version of its product boasting a 10,000-person waitlist.

Chief Executive Mike Winter said in an interview that the company has enjoyed strong growth since it last raised capital in 2021. The new seed round, he added, was made easier by a growing interest in artificial intelligence both in the general public and among investors, spurred by high-profile projects like OpenAI’s ChatGTP large language model.

Co-founded by technology sector veteran Winter and former race car driver Scott Mansell, trophi.ai’s software offers players of popular racing simulator iRacing AI-generated feedback about how to improve their performance.

Along with Build, Halifax’s Concrete Ventures and various angels also participated in the round.

“Investors love what they’re seeing, and it didn’t hurt that ChatGPT came out in December and made a lot of people realize the potential of AI,” said Winter. “It’s a hot market for AI — I think for good reason.”

Winter is a Memorial University-trained computer engineer who has worked for IBM, as well as New York senior care startup Mavencare. Mansell has driven an array of racecars at a professional level — including Formula One cars that he repurposed for other racing series — and founded motorsport coaching and media company Driver61.

With a goal of reaching 100,000 users by the end of next year, Winter said trophi.ai’s next move will be to expand its software compatibility to include other driving simulators, including Assetto Corsa Competizione, and eventually other types of video games altogether, including zany vehicular soccer game Rocket League and, eventually. first-person shooter game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

The company started with driving simulators, Winter added, because the typical input devices are usually confined to an electronic wheel, shifter and two or three pedals, making them relatively simple to model.

“Rocket League, it’s three on three — you’re not just driving around trying to go fast,” said Winter. “So we’ve solved the easier of the problems with artificial intelligence, and now we want to scale up to harder problems and show how that can work."

After they founded trophi.ai in December 2020, Winter and Mansell started gathering data to train their AI system by offering an e-sports coaching service. It selected coaches based on the quality of their own virtual driving skills via what Winter at the time described as “a grinder of an application process.” 

Future training data will be gathered from users — the free tier of trophi.ai’s subscription service involves data-sharing — with the AI system ranking the quality of the training data via existing in-game metrics like points systems.

And eventually, further in the company’s future, Winter hopes to apply similar AI technology to real-world sports, such as hockey.

Although trophi.ai is available worldwide, the platform is currently offered only in English, so Winter and Mansell are focusing their marketing efforts on North America and Western Europe, with other geographies to come.

In addition to the 10 to 15 staff Winter plans to hire, trophi.ai already has five local employees and one remote worker. He added that the broad public interest in AI has made hiring easier, even amidst a labour shortage, as has the fact that trophi.ai is being developed in coding languages usually used for game development, such as Microsoft’s C-Sharp, offering programmers a unique challenge.

In fact, Winter and Mansell recently recruited as their principal data scientist David Churchill, a prominent artificial intelligence researcher at Memorial University who for years organized an international AI StarCraft tournament. His presence is proving to be another significant asset for the company’s hiring efforts.

“(Churchill) was a pioneer in AI and gaming, and it continues to be one of his key areas of focus,” said Winter. “Him joining us part time is a massive win, which helps us recruit.”