Hovione Capital, a European venture capital firm focused on investing and building breakthrough companies, announces today that its portfolio company Anybrain secured a €1.0 million investment from Trust Esport, a leading venture capital fund dedicated to Esports. This follows a period of company building, with seed investment and close involvement by Hovione Capital.

Anybrain was co-founded by PhDs and engineers from the University of Minho in Braga, Portugal, world-renowned experts in artificial intelligence and big data processing. Anybrain, owner of a patented technology for analysis of behavioral data from human-computer interactions, develops SaaS solutions for video game studios, allowing seamless player identification, fraud prevention, age control and fatigue tracking. "After more than 4 years of research and development, we are very proud and excited to open our technology to the global gaming and Esports industry”, said André Pimenta, CEO and co-founder of Anybrain, whose objective is to provide studios with "solutions that are easy to integrate and compatible with the main game development platforms”, particularly Unreal Engine, Unity, Source and Cry Engine.

Hovione Capital provided initial seed capital to Anybrain. "Hovione Capital was the first investor to recognize the extraordinary potential of Anybrain’s technology for non-invasive monitoring of human behavior. Since the beginning, Hovione Capital has worked alongside the founders to bring their technology to market, even co-writing their foundational patents that protect this groundbreaking technology”, says Peter Villax, Chairman of Hovione Capital. "Esports have been growing massively, and in 2019 had a global audience of 443 million people. The global market for Esports is forecast to exceed $1bn for the first time in 2020, and this new product from Anybrain has the potential to transform the industry by encouraging positive player behavior”, says Ricardo Perdigão Henriques, CEO of Hovione Capital.

Anybrain is the fifth investment of Trust Esport, a French venture capital fund dedicated to the financing and the support of innovative companies in Esports and entertainment industries. "Several pain points still limit Esports when it comes to online competitions, especially in terms of security and fairness”, adds Matthieu Dallon, Founding Partner of Trust Esport, "the solutions provided by the highly qualified team of Anybrain will quickly become standards and will contribute to the future CSR policies of the major companies of the gaming industry”.