SPARQ, a UAE-based startup in Ras Al Khaimah’s Innovation City free zone, opened an $8.5m seed round with early participation from the a16z Scout Fund. The scout programme involvement means the disclosed amount is not a partner-led a16z cheque, and most of the round is expected to come from other undisclosed investors. The company describes the round as opening, implying additional close-outs. Founded by Christopher Pail and Christoffer Wilhelmsen, SPARQ spent two years building before raising, with founders contributing $2.5m and a team of more than 20 engineers. It shipped a proprietary C++ engine and has a 6,000-person creator waitlist for beta access. SPARQ positions its engine as production scaffolding for shippable titles, handling code, assets, networking, publishing, and monetisation while creators retain design control.
"It is positioned not as a prompt-to-game toy of the kind that has proliferated over the past year but as a real engine intended for shippable titles. The market it wants to enter is competitive. Roblox has aggressively pushed agentic AI tools into its existing creator base, allowing the assistant to plan, build and self-test games. Epic's Unreal Engine remains the production-grade default. A handful of third-party tools, including Lemonade and BloxBot, are already pulling toward the same low-code-creator audience SPARQ is targeting."
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