Cooked closes a pre-seed round at an $18M valuation after record month without a dollar spent on paid acquisition.
Cooked closes a pre-seed round at an $18M valuation after record month without a dollar spent on paid acquisition.
Whilst most gaming platforms spend heavily to acquire their first users. Totem didn't. Eight weeks after launching Cooked.com, its second brand, the company has processed $34M in wagers in a single month, built an average deposit of $495, and driven every dollar of that volume through organic growth alone.
The numbers validate a thesis Totem has been building toward since its founding. Owning the full technology stack, from product infrastructure to payment processing, would produce a platform that third-party-dependent competitors simply couldn't match. Cooked, built entirely on Totem's proprietary technology with no outsourced or licensed systems, is the clearest demonstration of that yet.
"We wanted to rewrite the playbook entirely," said Karl Flores (Totem Co-Founder/CEO). "What we've built these past few months most platforms haven't achieved in years. Cooked is what happens when you build without compromise, and the market is responding."
Cooked has closed its pre-seed funding round at an $18M USD valuation, with backing from investors who bring deep experience across gaming and crypto. The capital funds an immediate expansion. US Sweepstakes beta will launch across 35 states within the week. A full Sportsbook follows within 30 days, timed to coincide with the NBA Finals, one of the highest-volume periods in the online wagering calendar.
Both products ship on the same proprietary infrastructure that has underpinned Cooked since launch.
The company is also moving into live streaming, developing technology that will allow audiences to engage with predictions in real time across sports, entertainment and live content without leaving the stream they're watching. Totem owns the technology outright, which it says gives Cooked a meaningful first-mover advantage as streaming and interactive gaming continue to converge.
Alongside this, Cooked is formalising partnerships with global streamers not as paid promoters, but as equity stakeholders in the brand. It's a deliberate structure, designed to align the interests of creators who bring large, highly engaged live audiences with the long-term growth of the platform.
Totem is currently raising its next round to fund the global rollout.
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