Sam Kiki
American business executive
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sam Kiki is an American technology executive, professional poker player and record holder.[1] He is the founder and CEO of Monkey Tilt.[2][3] He is also the co-founder of Manifold Trading,[3] and winner of the television series High Stakes Poker. He has been featured on, Forbes, Daily Mirror, Binance, OK! magazine, Complex, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, amongst others.[4][5][6]
- Business executive
- Poker player
Sam Kiki | |
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| Born | Sam Kiki Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Amherst College |
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| Years active | 2018-present |
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Early life and education
Kiki was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada to parents of Syrian descent.[3] He attended Amherst College in Massachusetts on scholarship, where he earned a degree in Neuroscience.[3][2][7]
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.[8][9] He later joined Caesars Interactive as the Head of Product and Strategy.[3] 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.[10][11] Kiki subsequently co-founded Manifold Trading, a quantitative trading firm focused on high-frequency strategies and arbitrage.[12][13][3] 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.[2][13] In 2023, Ather Technologies was sold to Versifi.[14]
Monkey Tilt
Kiki is best known as the founder and CEO of Monkey Tilt, a Web3 and crypto-integrated iGaming company.[15] 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.[4] Later in 2024, the company announced an additional $30 million Series A round funding led by U.S hedge fund, Pantera Capital,[16][17][18] to further develop its platform and global reach.[5][19][20] 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,[21][22] being one of the first platforms to support cryptocurrency staking, integrating transactions in bitcoin, ethereum, dogecoin, amongst other stablecoins.[23] Some of the investor includes Tyga and Ryan Garcia.[7][3]
Professional poker player
Sam Kiki has appearances in high-stakes cash games, particularly on the televised series High Stakes Poker.[24] According to Sports Illustrated, Kiki recorded one of the most significant sessions in the show’s history, breaking multiple all-time records with a single-session haul described as unusually large even by the program’s standards.[1][25]
Filmography
Television
| Year | Title | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | High Stakes Poker | Señor Tilt |
Controversy
Kiki was a partner at Aesir Capital during the firm's engagement with Australian logistics start-up, GetSwift, and listed as the investor contact on the capital raising.[26] GetSwift was later penalized after investigation by the Australian Securities & Investment Commission. [27] While Aesir Capital and Kiki were not the subject of the investigation, their close ties to the company's fundraising efforts during the peak of its misleading announcements led them to face significant scrutiny from the media and disgruntled investors. Kiki resigned from Aesir Capital in March of 2018, shortly after articles from the Australian Financial Review critical of GetSwift and Aesir Capital were published. [28]