The team behind BetHog has announced plans to imminently close the challenger crypto casino and switch their attention and resources to the AI dealer product developed by in-house B2B arm Sentient Studios.
BetHog, which was established by FanDuel co-founders Nigel Eccles and Rob Jones, launched in November 2024 offering casino and sports betting, but will cease operations from 31 July – with existing customers having until that date to withdraw their funds.
CEO Eccles told EGR the decision to focus entirely on Sentient Studios is due to the “very strong” demand from operators, including tier-one businesses.
BetHog’s underlying technology is being folded into Sentient Studios, while the engineering team has already redirected their attention to the AI product.
Last October, BetHog, which is regulated in Anjouan, rolled out ‘Sunny’, hailed at the time as the world’s first AI dealer. Then, in April, Sentient Studios was launched following $10m Series A funding round.
Co-led by Will Ventures and RockawayX, and with participation from PCV, 6MV, Bullpen Capital and Advancit Capitial, the raise took BetHog’s total funding to $16m.
The team behind BetHog and Sentient Studios said at the time that the AI offering had proved to be 10 times more popular than the live dealer equivalent. Alongside Sunny, the studio has Tong, a native Chinese speaking AI croupier specialising in baccarat.
Talking to EGR about the switch of focus to the B2B arm, Eccles said the demand from unnamed operators was “very strong”, coupled with it being a “real success with players”.
“In talking with operators, there’s just real demand for it,” he said. “We knew when we launched B2B three months ago that there was a little bit of a tension between having two businesses, one B2C and one B2B.
“Almost no one does both. As we got further into it, we realised that we were going to have to decide, and the demand that we saw on the B2B side was just very strong.”
Speaking after the Sunny rollout, Eccles told EGR that he expected operators and suppliers to develop their own AI dealers and that in five years, 80% of dealers would be AI.
In December, SkillOnNet announced the launch of its own AI-powered roulette dealer for Mexican brand PlayUZU, while Avanti Studios – set up by former LeoVegas Group CEO Gustaf Hagman and ex-Authentic Gaming boss Jonas Delin – entered the space this year.
And last week, Octane Studios unveiled its latest games studio that will provide operators with “photorealistic dealers”.
Asked if the decision to focus on Sentient Studios had anything to do with more companies entering the space, Eccles explained the level of competition is “in line with what we expected”.
He added: “We felt really good that we were first to market. We like our approach of being very iterative, in that we’ve released a product and then every two weeks we make it better.
“We now have seen a lot more competition but it’s probably in line with what we expected. I don’t think that’s changed anything.
“The bigger one is the demand from the operators. We didn’t know whether this was something that they thought of as a novelty [and that they’re] not really that interested in it.
“But actually, what we find from the operators is a lot of real interest and real interest to trial and roll out as soon as possible.”
Since its launch, the business has gone from 12 members of staff in the UK and four in the US to approximately 15 in the UK, with Eccles remaining in North America.
The UK team is mostly product development, with one person in marketing and another in business development.
Operators will be able to receive a fully customisable, multilingual AI dealer in under two weeks, with the aim of lowering that to a week.
Sentient Studios plans to expand the number of languages it offers from 15 to 74.
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B2C offering to close on 31 July, as CEO Nigel Eccles tells EGR the appetite among several tier-one firms for B2B AI product has been “very strong”
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