£10m seed to power voice-driven, on-device AI for offline game worlds
This article covers Iconic, a gaming startup, which has secured a £10m seed round to develop voice-driven, on-device AI systems that let players shape game worlds through natural speech. The funding will support development of its ACT-1 platform and demo The Oversight Bureau, targeting game developers and players in the gaming sector by enabling voice-led, offline-capable narrative mechanics.
Iconic, a gaming startup founded in 2023, has secured a £10 million seed round to develop voice-driven, on-device AI systems that let players shape game worlds through natural speech. The funding underwrites further work on its ACT-1 platform and a demo title, The Oversight Bureau, as the company pushes to lower development costs and remove reliance on cloud services and persistent connectivity.
Why it matters
On-device intelligence that understands and responds to spoken input promises a different player experience from scripted interactions or cloud-dependent AI. If Iconic’s approach scales, studios could offer highly personalised, voice-led narratives without ongoing cloud bills or the same privacy trade-offs associated with server-based processing. That matters both for large franchises looking to add new interaction models and for smaller studios seeking to prototype richer worlds without ballooning infrastructure costs.
Inside the product
Iconic’s core technology is its ACT-1 platform: a modular, on-device engine designed to power voice-driven narrative systems and character behaviour. The company says ACT-1 uses SLLMs to run locally, enabling gameplay without internet connectivity. Its demo, The Oversight Bureau, is presented as a narrative puzzle where every spoken word can alter the environment and character responses. That demo was shown at Gamescom alongside a presentation with NVIDIA and has drawn attention for its responsiveness and immersion.
The team highlights two practical benefits of on-device processing: reduced cloud costs and fewer privacy concerns for players. Iconic also positions the platform as a tool for developers, aiming to speed creative iteration and lower the technical complexity of building interactive, character-rich worlds.
Iconic’s roster includes hires from Unity, Meta, Sony and Microsoft, academic links to Cambridge University, and creative talent with experience on franchises such as GTA and Star Wars. The company also lists advisers from NBCUniversal and Embracer Group.
Who are the investors?
Iconic’s £10 million seed round was co-led by Kindred and Northzone. The round also attracted strategic backers and industry leaders from Google’s AI Features Fund, Meta, Disney and OpenAI, described by the company as a curated group of AI, gaming and systems engineering experts supporting the platform’s development.
In the announcement, Andrew Bowell, Co-founder & CEO at Iconic, said:
Our voice-driven gameplay experience is transforming traditional entertainment, utilising novel technology and innovative digital systems to enhance creativity, revolutionise the player experience, and redefine the boundaries of gaming. We are excited to announce our successful seed round led by Kindred and Northzone, with further support from leading industry players including Google, a testimony to Iconic building the next iteration of interactive entertainment.
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Founder perspective
Iconic was started in 2023 by John Lusty and Junaid Hussain as a small, technically focused team exploring how recent AI advances could extend creative tools for developers and reshape player interaction. Andrew Bowell joined from Unity, where he was Product Head, to lead the company’s product and go-to-market efforts. The team formally launched in 2024 as prototypes demonstrated the potential of voice-driven, character-led worlds.
The founders frame the work as both artistically driven and developer-focused: building systems that let creators experiment faster while lowering engineering and operational overhead.
The bigger picture
The deal and Iconic’s product point to rising interest in local AI inference in games — a response to concerns about cloud costs, latency and player privacy. The company’s emphasis on offline-capable SLLMs and speech-driven mechanics taps into a wider trend among gaming investors seeking new interaction paradigms that can be deployed at scale without constant server dependency.
Iconic’s mix of talent from major studios and academic centres, plus its presence at Gamescom, underscores how UK-founded teams are positioning themselves within the broader European game and AI ecosystem. If on-device conversational systems prove practical, they could reshape development economics and gameplay design across the region.
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