Board raises $20 million to bring in-person games to the living room

Board is making a direct wager against the attention economy. The startup, founded in 2023 by Brynn Putnam, raised a $20 million Series A on June 2 led by Union Square Ventures, adding Michael Mignano to its board and bringing in angel backers Biz Stone, Tim Ferriss and Scott Belsky as it pushes a living-room product built around in-person play.

Putnam knows the hardware business can scale. She sold Mirror to Lululemon for $500 million in 2020, and Board is now leaning on that track record to sell a different kind of screen. The company publicly launched on October 28, 2025, describing itself as a face-to-face game console that uses a 24-inch touchscreen and proprietary PieceSense technology to recognize physical game pieces. Board says the product blends board games and video games, but with the explicit goal of pulling people into the same room.

The pitch is already finding an audience. Board says it has reached tens of thousands of homes and places where people gather, including schools, hospitals and restaurants. The company also says 85% of customers average more than 30 play sessions per month, a sign that recurring use, not novelty, is driving the business. The new funding is intended to accelerate expansion from a gaming console into a creator platform, including the upcoming launch of Board Studio.

That growth comes as consumers and founders alike look for alternatives to always-on digital life. While AI startups keep setting fundraising records, another pocket of tech culture is moving in the opposite direction: cyberdeck creators are building whimsical DIY computers that literally encourage people to touch grass. The term traces to William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer, and the modern revival took off after Raspberry Pi-era single-board computers made homebrew builds easier in the 2010s.

One of the clearest signals of that shift has been Annike Tan, the London-based creator who posts as Ube Boobey. Her mermaid-themed cyberdeck inside a clamshell purse went viral in March 2026, and her videos have since drawn millions of views. Together with Board’s raise, the trend suggests a broader consumer appetite for tactile, human-scale technology that treats being offline, or at least being in the same room, as the point rather than the drawback.