The last remnant of IronSource acquired by Tripledot for tens of millions of dollars
Supersonic, the last major gaming division remaining from the acquisition of the Israeli company IronSource, is being sold to the British company Tripledot, which is entering operations in Israel for the first time. About a third of the company's employees will be laid off as part of the move.
The British gaming company Tripledot, owned by Israeli entrepreneurs Lior Shiff and Eyal Chameides, is acquiring Supersonic — the Israeli gaming studio that was established within IronSource six years ago and acquired along with it by the American company Unity in a massive deal. With the completion of the acquisition deal, Supersonic becomes the Israeli development center of Tripledot, one of the fastest-growing gaming companies in the world, with revenues of over $2 billion a year. Behind Tripledot also stand Israeli investors — such as Len Blavatnik's ClalTech, which was also one of the prominent investors in IronSource, and the Lightspeed fund, whose investment is managed by partner Dudu Gosersky.
The deal amount was not published, but it is estimated in the industry at tens of millions of dollars. The deal serves as a lifeline for Supersonic, the gaming company that was put on the shelf about half a year ago by its owners, the American gaming company Unity, which merged the Israeli IronSource into itself five years ago in a deal that reflected a valuation of $2.9 billion. Unity failed in the merger of the Israeli IronSource for reasons related to organizational culture, management changes in the American company, turmoil in the gaming industry, and changes in priorities. Unity's stock has remained at a relatively constant price since the acquisition less than four years ago, reflecting a valuation of about $15.5 billion for the company.
Reducing center activity
Last March, after several rounds of layoffs in IronSource's operations at the company's offices in the Azrieli Sarona tower, Unity announced the closure of the IronSource product, an advertising network and recommendation engine for downloading mobile games, and the putting on the shelf of Supersonic — a casual mobile gaming studio employing 125 workers, 95 of whom are in Israel. This morning (Thursday), Supersonic informed its employees of its acquisition by Tripledot, itself a developer of mobile games, a deal that includes the purchase of the team, the game gallery, and the intellectual property. The company also informed employees of an intention to reduce the activity of the center, which until now had not operated profitably, in accordance with the goals set for it by Unity. Tripledot is interested in turning Supersonic into a profit and loss unit and accordingly reducing the number of employees by about a third, so that in Israel and other centers of the company in the world, such as Vietnam and Turkey, about 40 employees will be laid off in total.
Unity still has one asset left from the days of IronSource — the Aura division — gaming activity intended for telecommunications operators — and this employs, according to estimates, another few dozen Israeli employees who will remain in the hands of the American gaming company. Supersonic Studios is a studio behind about a hundred casual games for smartphones, the most popular of which are Going Balls, Bridge Race, and the new and successful game Hole It. Ahead of its sale, the parent company Unity revealed for the first time the revenues of Supersonic, which are estimated at $50 million per quarter. According to estimates, after the deal, Tripledot's revenues will stand at no less than $2 billion a year.
Supersonic is a veteran brand of IronSource: 11 years ago, IronSource acquired the startup Supersonic Ads, which Gil Shoham and Arik Czerniak founded, for $150 million. Back then, Supersonic was an advertising network that helped distribute mobile games — and it was the activity that actually brought IronSource into the world of smartphones after years of operating mainly on personal computers. In 2020, IronSource established a separate gaming development activity and used the Supersonic brand without connection to the historical advertising network. Among its founders: Igor Breslavsky, who manages the division today, and Nadav Ashkenazi, who has since joined IronSource founders Tomer Bar-Zeev and Omer Kaplan to establish their new startup, Zyg Edge.
At Supersonic, they developed hybrid casual games — meaning those that include a revenue channel from selling points, turns, or digital aids within the game, as well as an alternative revenue channel — one based on advertising. Despite the crisis in the mobile gaming industry that stems from the rush of users towards short videos like Stories or Reels at the expense of games, games that have developed two alternative revenue channels are considered a growth engine — and Tripledot, which has developed an engine capable of estimating the chance of users paying in apps or being exposed to advertisements, is interested in such an asset.
Acquisition of AppLovin for $800 million
Tripledot gained media attention all at once in May last year when it turned from an unknown company into a prominent player in the gaming market, after it acquired the gaming division of AppLovin — Unity's competitor — for $800 million. At that time, Tripledot was reflected a company valuation of $2 billion.
The company grew based on the development of well-known games like Solitaire, Sudoku, and Tetris and combinations between them. The company's first game that gained popularity, Wooduku, is an apparently simple combination between Sudoku and Tetris. The company's secret formula is an algorithm that knows how to constantly improve games so that they generate more revenue from advertising or in-app purchases. "If you have revenues from users that are 20% or 30% higher than the competitors, you can defeat them even in the automatic advertising auctions and significantly increase distribution," said Shiff in an interview he gave last year to Globes. "Thus, if you have a product that is 20% better than the competitors, you will be able to increase your distribution tenfold. So that basically you can harness your relative advantage in revenues and profits for a significant improvement in the promotion of the game."
According to estimates, one of the reasons for the acquisition is the desire to attract small game studios that create and distribute games quickly using artificial intelligence, so that these will be uploaded to the Supersonic gaming and advertising platform and from there distributed using Tripledot's tools.
This is the 12th acquisition of Tripledot, which is now, as mentioned, generating about $2 billion across hundreds of games and employs 2,600 workers after it. This will also be the first presence of Tripledot — a company with partially Israeli management and an Israeli team of investors in Tel Aviv.
