Kelly Sumner

Kelly Sumner (born 29 April 1961), is a Director of ArBa Developments, a software development company based in Bangalore, India, Chairman of Reactional Music, and an investor in Sonic Data Limited.

Kelly has run two NASDAQ listed companies. He has 40 years experience in hardware and software, starting as a trainee electronics engineer at Commodore in 1979. He progressed up the corporate ladder becoming Managing Director of Commodore in the UK.

From hardware he moved into entertainment software, joining US based Nintendo and Sega publisher Gametek as European MD before becoming CEO. Kelly merged Gametek into the fledgling publisher Take Two shortly thereafter. As CEO he took the company to annual sales of $1 billion, investing in the creation of amongst others, Rockstar Games, launching products such as Grand Theft Auto and delivering a four-fold increase in the share price.

After Take Two, Kelly became CEO of RedOctane fronting the commercial development of Guitar Hero, the video game that went on to become a $1 Billion franchise. He sold RedOctane to Activision in 2006 for $160m.

More recently Kelly has been investing in early stage tech companies. During this period he has been chairman of Intent Media, which was sold to Newbay Capital; and Mediatonic which was sold to Synova Capital, and a Board Director of the cloud CRM company, TPoint, which was sold to New York based private equity company Aquiline Capital Partners.

He is currently a Director of ArBa Developments, Chairman of Reactional Music, and an investor in the intelligent content tech start-up, Sonic Data Limited.

Kelly currently resides in Weybridge, Surrey with his wife, Kirsteen.

I remember having a phone meeting and they said:

‘We’ve got this idea for a guitar product.’And my heart sank. I had been involved with guitar products in the past

and they were all dead wood.

- Kelly Sumner, Former Red Octane CEO