RF Labs, Inc. today announced an investment of $500K led by Unbounded Capital, alongside participation from 1517 Fund and two other angel investors. RF Labs is focused on revolutionizing live gaming by leveraging modern phygital (physical + digital) technologies. Their focus on building secure and data-driven applications for Poker has changed the way card rooms live stream and players analyze their gameplay.

Maanit Madan, founder of RF Labs, said, “I started RF Labs after realizing the effect data had on my gameplay as a competitive poker player. The lack of technology in live games hinders growth. Our goal has always been to pass the RF Turing Test: an experience that does not affect the physical characteristics of gaming, but provides digital access to live gameplay. Building ubiquitous and technology driven products is a natural next step to improve competitive and social experiences for players and businesses globally.”

RF Labs is currently focused on increasing adoption of their RFID hardware solution and software analytics engine in the Poker market, a game played by over 120M people worldwide. They intend to grow beyond live streamed games and into the competitive socializing market of Poker, and other games, using their proprietary RFID tracking technology. The ubiquitous integration of the hardware and intelligent software allows them to improve the social gaming experience, while providing data analytics to support coaches, professionals, and social recreational players of these games. This sets up RF Labs to be at the forefront of sensor fusion with the increased adoption of augmented reality technology in the coming years.

As RF Labs started to gain traction in the last few months, it caught the eye of Unbounded Capital's founder, Zach Resnick. Unbounded Capital's focus on micropayments, along with the founders being former poker pros and coaches, gives them an understanding of the market that will help guide RF Labs. This is the firm's first investment outside of a company explicitly using a scalable blockchain.

Zach Resnick said, "Jack’s and my involvement in building Just Hands Poker nearly a decade ago was an attempt to solve some of the same problems that RF Labs has identified and solved. Few in poker or other games and sports have tried to tackle these problems. Most importantly, we are incredibly bullish on the founder, Maanit. I know very few people in the world that have been able to move as fast as Maanit has to date. His expertise on the problem and solution and his ability to execute to date make us extremely optimistic about his future success."

1517 Fund backs founders that are dropouts, renegade students & deep tech scientists. They believe that Maanit Madan fits in directly with this thesis as he is now dropping out of school to focus on RF Labs full time. Their experience founding the Thiel Fellowship puts them in a unique situation to successfully identify and support companies like RF Labs that are focused on building a moonshot product founded on deep tech. 1517 has a portfolio of companies across multiple verticals, and a large community of founders globally, that support each other in reaching the goal of solving problems using hard science.

Two other angel investors and professional poker players have joined the team of investors backing RF Labs in this round. RF Labs raised their first angel round from Chocho Ventures about a year ago. Since then, RF Labs has worked with some of the most influential poker players and card rooms in the industry to build the foundation of RF Poker. With the Data and Analytics market in Sports crossing $4B, and competitive socializing businesses like TopGolf being acquired for $2B+, RF Labs has potential to create a brand around technology embedded in social and professional gaming. From entertainment to coaching, with the group of investors, advisors, and ambassadors supporting the company, RF Labs is on path to turn their product into a norm for businesses and homes globally.