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Sami Ramly
Creator of Echo Chess
Sami Ramly is the founder and CEO of Echo Chunk AI, a company that develops AI-based puzzle games.13 He is an AI product leader and machine learning practitioner based in the San Francisco Bay Area.2
Professional Background
Ramly has a strong background in technology and machine learning. He has led teams at various tech and entertainment companies, from seed-stage startups to post-IPO companies.23 Some key highlights of his career include:
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Creator of Echo Chess: Ramly developed Echo Chess, a viral free-to-play daily puzzle game that combines chess mechanics with AI-driven obstacles. The game has thousands of weekly active users across 80+ countries and topped the front page of Hacker News.2
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Founder of Echo Chunk AI: In 2022, Ramly founded Echo Chunk AI, which recently raised $1.4 million in pre-seed funding to further develop AI-based puzzle games.3
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Previous Roles: He served as Head of Product for TransportVR at Wevr, a Series B startup recognized as one of the Top 10 World's Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.2
Achievements and Recognition
- Awarded EB-1A classification by the US Government for Extraordinary Ability, also known as the "Einstein Green Card".2
- Top 1% in LLM prompt injection at HackAPrompt.2
- Angel investor and Limited Partner (LP) in early-stage AI/ML startups.2
Education and Community Involvement
- Founding Member of Rabbit Hole, Stanford's premier dev community.2
- Launched the inaugural Next Gen of VR annual conference.2
Ramly's expertise lies in combining AI technology with game design to create innovative and engaging experiences. His vision for Echo Chunk AI includes empowering players through user-generated content tools and fostering a community-driven approach to game creation.3
Highlights
I first learned chess when I was 3 and have been obsessed with strategy games ever since. Today I’m excited to share that we’ve raised an oversubscribed $1.4M pre-seed for Echo Chunk AI to take Echo Chess and our vision for the future of AI and games to the next level! 🚀
SO incredibly thankful for the unbelievable dream team of investors who are joining us on our mission, and who are all world-class experts at the exact intersection we're tackling. I couldn’t thank you all enough for your support:
A16Z GAMES SPEEDRUN by Andreessen Horowitz (Joshua Lu Jonathan Lai Andrew Chen); Mark Pincus, Founder of Zynga; Eric Wu, Founder of Opendoor; South Park Commons (Aditya Agarwal Evan Tana); Stefano (Stef) Corazza, Head of Generative AI at Roblox and Founder of Mixamo; Ajinkya Apte, CEO of Snapser and fmr-CTO of FarmVille mobile; Patrick Wyatt, Founder of Guild Wars and early Blizzard VP (Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo); Joon Sung Park, AI researcher and lead author of Stanford Generative Agents; Albert Lai, Founder of Kontagent; Founders You Should Know (Jennifer Yip); David King, early Googler; and our advisor James Gwertzman, Founder of PlayFab (acq. by Microsoft).
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved the craft that goes into strategy games. As a kid I’d wake up at 4am to call dibs on the family’s Pentium PC before my older siblings, hot-seating them in PvP every day after school, and sneaking out of bed to create custom Heroes 3 maps at night. Man, was it hard to call shotgun on that PC!
As I became a (proud!) adult gamer, it became obvious to me that while the fresh supply of strategy games was struggling, the latent demand was still super high and underserved. And I became convinced there’s a real opportunity today, thanks to advancements in AI, for a huge wave of fresh ideas to revolutionize the field.
Chess, for e.g, is a fantastic medium, but over time the meta has (d)evolved into incentivizing openings memorization and “mate in X” maneuvers over first-principle thinking. I felt there was a missed opportunity there and wanted to create something true to the core spirit of chess that I first fell in love with as an uninitiated kid, without the newcomers gatekeeping.
I became fascinated with ways AI could be leveraged in game design. Turns out this was actually the best driver to scratch my own itch and tackle the problem head-on by starting Echo Chunk AI.
We believe AI will be the best copilot for game design and that it’ll empower us humans in the co-creation process of the future. Our goal is to build strategy games that generate themselves and that cater for everyone, starting with Echo Chess, your favorite daily puzzler where you are what you eat.
And we’re hiring! We’re remote-friendly in SF and love hearing from folks in tech and games. Let's chat, just DM here or [email protected]!
And finally, I should check: have you solved Echo Chess today? 🙂
#chess #AI #puzzles #founderstories #founderjourney #fundraising #startups
Can AI/ML make Chess more fun in Single-Player?
The answer is now yes, with 99%+ probability.
Below is the dev story of Echo Chess from behind the scenes.
Code: ✅ Data: ✅ Models: ✅ Systems: ✅ Challenges: ✅ Design rants: ✅ Universal principles to ignore in your products: ✅
This is a deep dive for all you folks who've been curious about how ML, PM principles, and relentless tenacity can turn a hand-drawn scribble into a Tetris-like Chess variant being played in 300+ cities.
If you've ever wondered how Fun can be engineered, how 'infinite' products get built, or if AI/ML and Design can play well together,
then the story below is for you.
Enjoy.
