CEO and co-founder Max Albert didn’t expect to work in the ad tech space, but a lifelong passion for gaming led him there.
Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Max Albert
Max Albert never expected to become an ad tech founder—but that’s where the 30-year-old CEO of startup Adrenaline Interactive’s decades-long passion for gaming led him.
That passion sparked at age nine, when Albert’s mom started taking him to Mario Kart tournaments at their local library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The prize was the stuff of any game-loving nine-year-old’s dreams: a GameStop gift card.
“I basically never lost. For two years, I played every month,” Albert told us. “And I felt richer than Elon Musk when I was like nine years old, standing in the GameStop with $100 that I won. I just love gaming because it brings me such a great community of friends who are really smart and kind and loyal.”
Before long, he was programming his own games. He later carried on his family’s tradition of attending the University of Michigan, where he graduated with a computer science degree. He continued creating games, including an NFL-themed game in which he helped brands place ads.
“I’d work with them to create these authentic product placement campaigns inside the game. And I saw the real power of it: My gamers loved it, the advertisers loved it, and it was really lucrative for my studio,” Albert recalled.
“But the problem with these product placement campaigns was that it was entirely manual. And so the whole thesis of Adrenaline is, how can we create software to automate the process of product placement within games?”
It was this experience helping brands with in-game product placements that inspired Albert and his co-founders to launch Adrenaline, which offers a platform called Brand Fusion AI that helps advertisers with in-game product placements for games like Fortnite and Roblox.
“It kind of happened naturally,” he said. “I was like, this thing that’s happening manually is really lucrative and really fun for my players; let’s create software that automates it.”
The team participated in the Antler startup accelerator in 2024, which Albert said was crucial for learning about the funding side of the business.
Adrenaline officially launched a couple of months later. In January 2025, the startup raised $2.09 million in a Series 1 seed round, with a post-money valuation of $10 million, according to PitchBook.
In April 2026, the startup took home the top prize in a statewide pitch competition called PitchMI (pronounced “pitch me”). That was after Adrenaline’s application to compete in the previous cycle was rejected.
Adrenaline beat three other startups in a Shark Tank-style championship featuring regional finalists: BedConnect, which operates an online system showing hospitals open nursing home beds; Electric Outdoors, which makes portable canopy systems with off-grid power, internet, clean water, and EV charging; and General Orbit, which makes navigation hardware and software for satellites.
The event, which drew 375 applications from across the state and more than 75 investors and venture capitalists, was co-hosted by the Michigan State University Research Foundation and the state of Michigan’s marketing arm, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. The second annual event awarded a total of $2.3 million in investment capital, with Adrenaline taking home $1.375 million.
“Our goal is to create a seamless pathway for founders to move from early traction to global scale without ever having to leave Michigan,” David Washburn, CEO of the MSU Research Foundation, said in a statement. “While we’re excited to support Adrenaline Interactive as they reach their next milestone, all four finalists will continue as part of our Michigan Rise investment portfolio, and we look forward to working alongside each of them as they grow and scale here in Michigan.”
The Adrenaline Interactive team plans to use their PitchMI winnings to hire a team to help them scale with advertisers, Albert said.
“I think the problem that’s still outstanding is, for gamers, they really want their ad experience to feel authentic and not interruptive to their experience gaming. A lot of the ads that you see in games today are pop-ups or billboard ads that stylistically don’t look like they belong in the game,” he said. “I really think that product placement is the friendliest way to advertise to gamers…How do we make that scalable, is the question.”
Adrenaline’s solution comes at a time when game studios are struggling financially, Albert said, even as there are massive untapped advertising opportunities. Research suggests that marketers dedicate tiny portions of their budgets toward gamers and still have trouble reaching them, despite the majority of the US population playing video games—although there are strong growth projections for in-game advertising revenue.
“A lot of Fortune 500 brands are looking to reach and impress younger consumers, Gen Z,” Albert said. “Advertisers feel really confident selling to consumers on other verticals like social media. What they’re really looking to do is place their brand authentically into the game to reach and impress Gen Z.”
