Lauren Forristal

Autonomous, AI-based players are coming to a gaming experience near you, and a new startup, Altera, is joining the fray to build this new guard of AI agents. The company announced Wednesday that it raised $9 million in an oversubscribed seed round, co-led by First Spark Ventures (Eric Schmidt’s deep-tech fund) and Patron (the seed-stage fund co-founded by Riot Games alums). The funding follows Altera’s previous raising a pre-seed $2 million from a16z SPEEDRUN and others

Troy Sheets began making music at 15 years old in his home studio with a keyboard synthesizer, drum machine and four-track cassette recorder — an impressive setup for a high school sophomore. However, it’s rare for young, up-and-coming musicians to have access to advanced equipment (other than a free app on their phone). And most adolescents can’t afford it. Plus, for someone starting out, a synthesizer can be confusing to use. That’s why Sheets decided