What Ed Craven's new AI venture could one day mean for Stake and Kick
While Ed Craven made his billions through crypto-powered gambling, he’s now spending much of that money trying to build Australia’s answer to OpenAI, and here’s what that could mean for betting platform Stake and streaming platform Kick.
When Kick was launched in 2022, streamers and their fans had plenty of assumptions about its future potential, chief among them that the platform was just a funnel to drive traffic to the crypto-gambling giant that is Stake. Those suspicions began to fade once it became clear that Stake didn’t directly own Kick, and that Ed Craven held majority shares in Kick through separate entities. Still, the two platforms remained tightly linked in public perception, with Craven being the common thread between them.
Craven is now taking a turn into the world of artificial intelligence with a new venture called Maincode. With his attention turned to this new AI endeavor, questions are surfacing about what this means for the futures of Stake and Kick.
Ed Craven is major investor in AI project Maincode
In February, Maincode was first publicly mentioned as an undisclosed AI project, quietly funded by Stake co-founder Ed Craven. At the time, few details were available beyond the fact that it was building a foundational model. Now it’s been revealed that the product has been in development since November 2024, operating under the radar with a core team of only 10.
According to ex-Microsoft and AWS data scientist Dave Lemphers, Ed Craven is the major investor behind Maincode, a company building a large-scale AI model similar to ChatGPT, but fully developed within the domestic confines of Australia. Instead of using existing tools from companies like OpenAI or Google, Maincode is training its own language model from scratch using its own original infrastructure and data set.
The goal is to create a sovereign AI foundation model that can be adapted for different industries and use cases. Multiple millions of dollars have already been invested in the company, with Craven being the main financial backer.
What Maincode AI could mean for Kick
With Maincode demanding serious capital and long-term R&D focus, it raises questions about how involved Ed Craven will remain in Kick’s next phase, as well as how the AI tool might one day be implemented on the streaming platform.
While Stake has made Craven billions, it’s still banned in his home country of Australia. By contrast, Maincode has been marketed as a purely Australian AI company, aiming to build homegrown models on par with those that have originated from the United States and China. That’s why it’s worth asking whether Craven, who also co-founded Kick, is trying to reposition himself beyond gambling. Maincode might be his attempt to step into a more mainstream tech spotlight, one that regulators, investors, and the Australian public are more likely to embrace. That could have ripple effects for both Kick and Stake.
For Stake, this move could signal that Craven is building in a space like AI that’s less likely to face the kind of regulatory pushback gambling platforms like Stake already do, especially in places like Australia. Or at the very least, it could experience a very different sort of regulation.
For Kick, it raises the question of how much attention and funding the platform will continue to receive if Craven is pouring time and capital into Maincode. More than that, Kick users wonder if the development and Mainline and Craven’s involvement could one day bring exclusive AI tools to Kick. Whether these tools were to come in the form of automated moderation or user support, it has the potential to make a big impact on a streaming platform that has already proven itself a willing disruptor in the space. Catching up to industry leader Twitch has been no easy task, and it’s possible that Mainline could provide new opportunities towards that end.
While this move may have some long-term implications for Stake, Kick is likely to continue on its current path, or even benefit from the implementation of Mainline. Craven has already taken a less public role in Kick’s day-to-day operations, with figures like Trainwreckstv serving as the platform’s face. But if Craven’s AI venture results in tools that enhance content moderation, improve streamer analytics, or streamline backend infrastructure, Kick could seriously benefit from those advancements.
Fariha Bhatti is a long-time gaming writer who loves competitive FPS games and slots with particularly fun themes. She got her start playing classic games developed by SNK, from legendary fighting game series The King of Fighters to challenging platform franchise Metal Slug. She now spends most of her time playing Valorant and Counter-Strike 2 while working her way through new slot releases to find her next favorite. Fariha has been published at PCGamesN, TalkEsport and ONE Esports.
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