You don’t need to be an AI startup to raise. Lucra has $20M to prove it. 

Slapping “AI” on your startup’s pitch deck is basically table stakes right now.

When a founder raised $20 million from Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest for an eSports gamification loyalty startup without those two letters in the spotlight, it got us wondering how the conversation even started — especially when ARK had already been burned by a company operating in the same space.