Sphere Studios was selected for the Spring 2026 cohort of the Supercell AI Innovation Lab.
The AI Innovation Lab is Supercell’s nine-week programme for founders building at the intersection of artificial intelligence and games, with hubs in San Francisco, Helsinki and Tokyo. We spent our nine weeks at the Helsinki hub, a few steps from Supercell’s own teams.
It started with a hackathon
In February, our CEO Enrique Phan and Jorge Gonzalez Regalado flew to Supercell’s headquarters in Helsinki for the Global AI Game Hack, a 56-hour hackathon run by the AI Innovation Lab with on-site hubs in San Francisco, Helsinki, London and Tokyo.
We won first place in the AI Game Tools track, and the Mistral AI sponsor track as well, with a tool for creating AI game companions: characters with their own personality and voice that reason, remember and play alongside you.
From Lapland to Demo Day
The lab kicked off with a bootcamp in Lapland, in the snow, before nine weeks of building in Helsinki next to the other teams of the cohort.
Three lessons we are bringing home:
- Speed of validation is the real advantage. Test an idea in days, not months.
- Leave the building. We took our prototypes to supermarkets, parks and football pitches, because that is where you hear what players really think.
- The environment is the product. Building next to other ambitious teams creates a kind of creative pressure you can’t get remotely.
The programme closed with Demo Day on 18 May 2026, where every team presented what it had built.
Mentored by Supercell
What made the lab different was the people. For nine weeks we worked hands-on with mentors from Supercell, the studio behind some of the most played mobile games in the world. They sat down with us on the game itself: the core loop and game design, progression and monetization, onboarding and live operations.
It was not a lecture series. Every week we brought a new build, they challenged our assumptions, and the following week we came back with changes to test. That cycle of feedback and iteration sharpened ChronosWorlds faster than any roadmap could have.
We also had access to playtesting tools and player insights that are usually out of reach for a small studio. Watching real players and reading the data behind their sessions helped us decide what to double down on and what to cut, and it shaped the direction of the game we are building today.
What it means for ChronosWorlds
Everything we learned about AI companions feeds directly into ChronosWorlds, starting with the AI coach that guides new players through their first steps.
Thank you to Supercell, the AI Innovation Lab team, our mentors and our fellow labbers for making Helsinki feel like home.