Mentioned in this article
- Randy Stude, a 13-year Intel veteran, has been named FanAI’s vice president of sales and marketing.
- Karim Varela, who was chief technical officer for dating app Coffee Meets Bagel, has joined as FanAI’s vice president of technology.
- FanAI delivers esports sponsorship performance data to clients, and is now expanding into traditional sports as well.
Esports analytics firm FanAI 
has hired a pair of new executives, with Randy Stude coming on as the vice president of sales and marketing and Karim Varela joining as vice president of technology.
Stude previously spent 13 years with Intel , from 2001-14, including 10 years leading the company’s PC gaming marketing efforts. He was also director of strategy at AMD from 2016-17.
Varela, meanwhile, was previously the chief technical officer for dating app Coffee Meets Bagel from 2014-17, and director at engineering at Tinder from 2013-14. He has also served as an advisor for other startups.
“FanAI delivers actionable social and ethnographic data, the likes of which many companies have never seen before,” said FanAI founder and CEO Johannes Waldstein, in a release. “As we expand our model to reach new markets, our in-house talent needs to grow alongside our strategic business objectives. Both Karim and Randy will be integral to our continued growth, as they truly represent the next evolution of FanAI, both on the backend as well as consumer-facing fronts.”
Related Article: FanAI Acquires Esports Data Company Waypoint Media
FanAI provides sponsorship performance data to clients, including teams such as Cloud9 , Gen.G Esports , and OpTic Gaming , as well as league and tournament operators such as Hi-Rez Studios and DreamHack .
Although the company began with a singular focus on esports, FanAI recently began expanding its services into traditional sports. Earlier this year, Waldstein told The Esports Observer that FanAI had recently started working with the NBA G League.
