Sam Kiki
Sam Kiki is an American gaming and technology executive. He is the founder and CEO of Monkey Tilt. He was chief product officer and chief strategy officer of Caesars Interactive Entertainment and later the chief commercial officer of Game Play Network. He is also the co-founder of Manifold Trading. He has been featured on, Forbes, Daily Mirror, Binance, OK! magazine, Distractify, Complex, Fortune, amongst others.
Early life and education
Kiki was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada to parents of Syrian descent. He attended Amherst College in Massachusetts on scholarship, where he earned a degree in Neuroscience.Career
He began his career at MGM Resorts in investor relations, where he worked with senior executives on projects related to sports betting, online gaming, and investor relations. He later joined Caesars Interactive as the Head of Product and Strategy Officer|Strategy]. At Caesars, he contributed to the due diligence process for the William Hill acquisition, managed partnerships involving ESPN and the NFL, and co-directed the company’s investment in Superdraft. He then became the chief commercial officer at Game Play Network, where he oversaw commercial strategy, partnerships, and capital development in online gaming. Kiki subsequently co-founded Manifold Trading, a quantitative trading firm focused on high-frequency strategies and arbitrage. He and his team later developed Ather Technologies as a spin-off, leveraging technology from that business to deliver market access and order routing solutions for institutional clients. In 2023, Ather Technologies was sold to Versifi.Monkey Tilt
Kiki is best known as the founder and CEO of Monkey Tilt, a Web3 and crypto-integrated iGaming company. In 2024, Monkey Tilt raised $21 million in an early funding round led by Polychain Capital, marking one of the largest investments in the iGaming blockchain sector at the time. Later in 2024, the company announced an additional $30 million Series A round funding led by U.S hedge fund, Pantera Capital, to further develop its platform and global reach. The platform integrates blockchain technology, NFT-based player rewards, and crypto payments, to bridge Web3 culture and mainstream entertainment. Coverage from AOL Finance and Yahoo Finance described the round as part of a broader effort to make online gaming more social and community-driven, being one of the first platforms to support cryptocurrency staking, integrating transactions in bitcoin, ethereum, dogecoin, amongst other stablecoins. Some of the investor includes Tyga and Ryan Garcia.In addition to its gaming, the company partnered with Complex during Super Bowl LIX to host a $1 million jackpot experience, as part of the Complex’s Family Style festival in New Orleans. The event was developed teaming-up with Truck Tilt and West Coast Customs.