BRUNSWICK, Maine — In these digital times, a lot of tech companies don't need an extravagant office or hundreds of employees to grow their business.
Brunswick-based Omnic.AI has just 10 employees in Maine but is rapidly growing as a leader in the artificial intelligence and esports market. The company secured more than $500,000 in funding this week after winning the 2024 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Startup Competition, hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
NEWS CENTER Maine first connected with CEO and co-founder Shaun Meredith in 2021, when the company was going through the Techstars Accelerator program at the Roux Institute in Portland.
“It’s been super exciting. We’ve got some phenomenal user growth. We’ve put three different games on our platform. It’s been super fun," Meredith said Thursday. “We now have over 7,500 users a month using our platform, and we’ve delivered over 308,000 insights to those users.”
Right now, the platform Omnic Forge is equipped for the games "Fortnite," "Valorant," and "Overwatch 2." Meredith said the plan is to put Rocket League on the platform this spring along with a number of other games before the end of this year. The company is the only one that analyzes the highly popular game "Fortnite," Meredith added.
While data analytics for competitive video gaming may seem confusing, it's very similar to how traditional sports teams use statistics and data to help their players improve. For example, baseball teams can work with a batter and study what pitches they hit well and what they need to improve on in the batter's box.
Omnic.AI's platform is no different, Meredith explained.
Users can log in and create a free profile and then start playing. The AI will then track gameplay and after a match, you can go back and see statistics on your aim, where on the game map you were most successful, among several other tools depending on what game you're playing.
The technology is geared for casual players who just want to improve at their favorite game as well as professional players and streamers.
“We also have a tool that basically, the AI watches a video of your gameplay and makes a highlight clip. So it just clips your game to a little 30-second clip highlighting your match," Meredith said. “For content creators, that becomes big, because if they’re streaming for eight to 10 hours a day, they don’t want to go back and have to edit all that video. Now they can just go back and pick out their little clips.”
Like the company, esports is growing across Maine. High school teams can compete in state championships and more colleges are investing in esports "arenas" for their teams to play in or offering esports management courses in the classroom.
“Esports are kind of the sports of the generation that’s coming up," Meredith said. “A lot of the parents that played games when they were young are now playing games with their sons and daughters.”
Meredith said there is plenty of space at the Brunswick office to offer summer internships for college students who can work with the AI and help it train with new games.