SMITTEN
15.9.2022 13:02:36 CEST | Business Wire | Press release
Dating app Smitten has raised a $10M Series A from Makers Fund, Possible Ventures, Wonder Invest and current shareholders ByFounders, ProFounders, Tennin, and Smitten's board member and Vivino founder Heini Zachariassen. Smitten, the most popular dating app in Iceland and the second most popular in Denmark, will use the financing to grow its team and to expand to new markets as they woo Gen Zers with their fresh, gamified approach to dating.
“My co-founder, Asgeir, and I share an intense interest in how people connect and communicate,” says David Simonarson, Smitten Co-Founder and CEO. “After years of creating social consumer apps, we fell in love with the online dating space and launched Smitten in 2020. We created personality-based games and fun interactive profiles to make it easy for strangers to form meaningful connections. Seeing how much our users love Smitten, we believe we can become the leading player in online dating for Generation Z.”
Smitten is founded by David Simonarson, CEO, and Asgeir Visir, Designer, and was released by the founders and its CTO, Magnus Olafsson. Smitten mixes games, entertainment, and flirting to jumpstart conversations and help users engage more seamlessly. Smitten's fun and creative approach to dating has struck a chord with Gen Zers, proven by the app’s more than 200 million swipes to date and whopping 30%+ stickiness rate. Most dating apps leave people to convert a match into a conversation with awkward starts that lead nowhere. Smitten makes getting into a conversation as easy as swiping through use of games, interactive profiles and icebreakers. Smitten gets users into fun, quality conversations regardless of their conversation skills, and has found that more than 60% of Smitten matches result in a post-match interaction vs 11% on industry-leading app, Tinder*.
The key to Smitten’s post-match interactions are mini-games people can play on each other’s profiles. “Our questionnaire game, Guessary, allows you to get to know the other person you are viewing by guessing how they answered a series of Yes-and-No questions,” explained Asgeir Visir, Smitten Co-Founder and Designer. “You could be answering questions like ‘Have they ever been arrested?’ or ‘Do they like pineapple on their pizza?’ and you would get immediate feedback if you answered correctly or not. Another fun game, Lie Detector, is inspired by the age-old social game Two Truths and Lie, where people add three statements about themselves to their profile, and you have one chance to spot the lie. These games are designed for users to get to know the person they are viewing before deciding if they want to like them or not. And the beautiful part is when you match with someone, the results of the games are posted in the chat and act as an icebreaker, making it so much easier to initiate a fun conversation.”
“Social discovery and gaming is an increasingly interesting intersection, and the team at Smitten have created an amazingly fun experience that truly strikes a chord with young adults,” said Alli Ottarson, Makers' lead on the deal. “Having spent time building a strong relationship with the founders David and Ásgeir, we have been privileged to a front row seat to follow Smitten´s success. We share a common vision for how the next generation will meet and interact, and we’re thrilled to be a part of the Smitten journey."
To learn more about Smitten, please visit smittendating.com.
ABOUT SMITTEN
Smitten is on a mission to make the most fun dating app in the world. Through creative, unique profile games and entertaining content, Smitten transforms how people view online dating. While operating at the intersection of dating, gaming, and entertainment, Smitten gives its users superpowers by making it as easy as swiping to get into a fun and meaningful conversation. Smitten outperforms the industry-leading dating app regarding post-match interactions, with more than 60% of matches progressing to some interaction. Smitten is founded in Iceland by co-founders David Orn Simonarson, CEO, and Asgeir Visir, UX Designer. The seasoned duo has been working together creating social apps to connect people for the past ten years. The team's mission is to create the most fun dating app in the world.
*per research at https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01952
About Makers Fund
Makers Fund is a global interactive entertainment venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments. Makers is dedicated to furthering growth and innovation in the interactive entertainment industry. With more than 90 portfolio companies to date, Makers provides founders strategic value that is deeply catered to companies across the value chain in the industry. For more information, visit makersfund.com.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220915005317/en/
About Business Wire
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Reply and IEO Launch Collaboration to Co-Develop and Train Domain-Specific Large Language Models for Oncology4.6.2026 10:10:00 CEST | Press release
Reply [EXM, STAR: REY] and the European Institute of Oncology (IEO) have launched a collaboration focused on the co-development and training of domain-specific Large Language Models for oncology. The initiative brings together Reply’s expertise in building frontier generative models grounded in enterprise knowledge with the IEO’s clinical expertise and data assets to develop models tailored to highly complex oncology settings. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260604488955/en/ Reply and the European Institute of Oncology (IEO) have launched a collaboration focused on the co-development and training of domain-specific Large Language Models for oncology. As a first step, the IEO’s clinical teams and Information Systems department are working with a multidisciplinary Reply team with deep expertise in healthcare and LLM specialisation to define and prioritise the use cases that will guide development, while also map
UK AI Minister Kanishka Narayan Joins The AI Summit London as 10th Anniversary Agenda Expands Across Enterprise AI, Innovation and Policy4.6.2026 10:00:00 CEST | Press release
London Tech Week's flagship AI event will feature 300 speakers, live AI demonstrations, startup pitch competitions, executive training and the National AI Awards The AI Summit London today revealed the full agenda for its highly anticipated 10th anniversary edition, delivering its most expansive and future-focused programme to date. Taking place 10–11 June at Tobacco Dock as the headline AI event of London Tech Week 2026, the Summit expects more than 5,000 attendees, 300 speakers, 100+ sponsors and exhibitors, and a special executive presentation from Kanishka Narayan, Minister for AI and Online Safety, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, across two days dedicated to the commercial realities and transformative potential of artificial intelligence. The 10th anniversary has been designed to move the conversation beyond experimentation and into enterprise-wide execution. New in 2026, the programme introduces The AI Impact Arena, delivering focused briefings and live demos,
Corona Launches 2026 Beach 100 Guide, Invites The World To Explore The Outdoors This Summer4.6.2026 10:00:00 CEST | Press release
Ahead of World Oceans Day, the global beach authority returns with a list of new locations, over 300,000 Tripadvisor experiences, and dedicated beach grants as part of its “This is Living” platform Corona, the world’s most valuable beer brand1, today announced the return of its annual global beach guide, the 2026 Corona Beach 100, ahead of World Oceans Day on June 8. The highly anticipated second edition spotlights 100 breathtaking and varied ocean-front destinations around the world while celebrating the natural ecosystems and local communities that help bring them to life. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260604412899/en/ 2026 Corona Beach 100 - Legzira Beach, Morocco Connected to Corona’s “This Is Living” platform, which invites consumers to step outside and live life to the fullest this summer, the 2026 guide features 27 new beaches, hundreds of localized Tripadvisor travel experiences inspired by the world
Lantern Expands Its Platform for Solving the Data Trust Problem with Strategic Acquisition and Key Executive Hires4.6.2026 10:00:00 CEST | Press release
Lantern Acquires Freyda to Create the First End-to-End Data Assurance Platform for Private Markets Lantern Limited (“Lantern”), the data assurance platform for private markets, announced today a strategic acquisition, expanded platform capabilities, and key leadership additions to address one of private markets biggest operational challenges: transforming fragmented, disconnected data across multiple sources into trusted, actionable intelligence. Private markets run on data, yet much of that data remains siloed, trapped in PDFs, and processed through highly manual workflows across both fund managers and investors. While GPs have increasingly modernized how they manage and report fund information internally, LPs still spend billions of dollars each year manually extracting, normalizing, and reconciling data from capital notices, quarterly statements, and other fund documents. With the acquisition of Freyda Limited (“Freyda”), one of the leading AI document intelligence platforms for ins
KAYTUS Launches MotusAI Enterprise Token Management Platform4.6.2026 09:02:00 CEST | Press release
KAYTUS, a leading provider of AI infrastructure and liquid cooling solutions, today announced the launch of enterprise-grade token management capabilities within MotusAI, enabling organizations to rapidly build, deploy, and operate secure on-premises AI token platform. This pioneering infrastructure enhancement transforms traditional GPU hardware into a unified, governable, and highly efficient internal token service ecosystem. By enabling rapid private deployment, MotusAI provides enterprises with a cost-competitive foundation for accelerating the scale-up of enterprise-grade AI agents while ensuring strong data privacy. Why Enterprises Must Build a Private Token Management Platform Now? As enterprise AI evolves from isolated model-based tools to interconnected AI agent systems that enable deep workflow automation, tokens are emerging as the fundamental “computing currency” of the modern organization. While standard LLM queries typically involve predictable, one-off inference requests
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom