Playkey raises $2.8M to fund its US expansion

Playkey, a game streaming service we saw earlier this year at Disrupt NY, has just closed an additional $2.8 million round of funding from Russia’s Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF).

Created at the suggestion of Vladimir Putin in 2013, the IIDF has invested in 293 companies to-date with the objective to strengthen infrastructure for Russian businesses. However, the investment does not represent official government support or involvement in Playkey.

According to Playkey CEO, Egor Guriev, profits have increased 300% over the last year. Current attendance of the gaming service is ~1M people per month, with 400k users. The Moscow-based streaming startup is planning to use its new resources to help expand services and servers to the United States, Western Europe and Asia.

As a quick refresher, Playkey allows gamers to utilize a 10MBps internet connection to stream Steam, Origin and Blizzard video games, without the need of a high-end gaming PC. The service can also be used as a remote storage locker of sorts, where you can register your existing game keys from your own library, instead of purchasing new keys for games you want to stream.

Playkey is working with recognizable gaming corporations such as Ubisoft, Bethesda, Capcom, Sega, Codemasters and Plug In Digital to smooth out the transition process of running game sessions on their services, as well as continuing support for multiplayer elements and cloud saves.