Become a member of GB MAX to gain exclusive access to the industry and to the most influential global B2B leadership community in the business of gaming, entertainment, and tech.
Join nowand also get a VIP ticket to GamesBeat Next (Nov 2-3, SF).Giulio Greco is about to enter his senior year of high school — but his real focus is building an AI game development startup valued at $40 million.
Greco launched his company ForgeGUI, which creates AI-powered tools intended to make game development more accessible to individual creators, on March 12. Last month, he closed a seed investment round valuing the company at $20 million led by a $2 million contribution by venture capital firm Verdict Capital. Since then, Greco has secured a strategic allocation within the same overall financing, raising a total of $3.2 million at a valuation of $40 million. After that, he celebrated his 18th birthday in late June.
“His parents had to sign documents when we invested,” said Verdict Capital founder and managing director Niko Bonatsos in an interview with GamesBeat.
Greco is a longtime user-generated content creator with experience within the Minecraft and Roblox space who told GamesBeat that he has eight years of experience developing UGC experiences. ForgeGUI is his first venture, using AI models developed by companies like OpenAI to help game makers quickly and easily build three-dimensional assets. To network with potential investors, Greco participated in the Z Fellows accelerator program in May 2026.
“Nowadays, it’s probably easier than ever, or at least it’s more accepted than ever, to raise as someone who’s younger,” Greco said in an interview with GamesBeat. “And I raised the seed round at 17, so I think that goes to show that the thing that matters the most is your background.”
ForgeGUI has grown quickly since launching in March. Yesterday, July 28, the company crossed the 300,000-user mark, according to numbers shared by Greco, who said he believe it was “pretty much guaranteed” that ForgeGUI would reach one million users by the end of 2026.
“I want to try to hit 5 million users before the end of the year,” he said.
Bonatsos told GamesBeat that Greco’s relatively young age had not fazed him during the fundraising process, pointing out that he and his partner Michael Fertik had both worked with teenaged founders “quite a few times.” He cited Greco’s years of experience in the UGC space, as well as his obsession with his company, as factors behind his confidence in Verdict’s $2 million investment — and flagged the company’s rapid user growth as validation of the bet.
“In essence we’re on the lookout for young freaks, in a good way — for extreme, high-slope-learning animals who are obsessed with what they’re doing, and they have insane velocity,” Bonatsos said.
At the moment, ForgeGUI only has one employee — a founding engineer — besides Greco. This week, the company plans to use some of its funding to staff up further by bringing more engineers on board.
Although Greco still has a year of high school left, he is already fully focused on scaling ForgeGUI further. Since securing investment, he’s moved from his home in Texas to San Francisco — and he certainly doesn’t plan to go to college next year. And he has lofty goals for the future of ForgeGUI, envisioning going public, rather than an acquisition deal, as the company’s ideal future.
“What’s our long-term financial future? IPO, for sure,” Greco said. “I’m not going to sell.”