【TIMELINE】2023/04#3
◉ Financing in the timeline
British mobile game studio TreesPlease has announced that it has secured $8 million in seed funding. Last year, the company released its first game, Longleaf Valley, a synthesis and tree-planting game where players can participate in real-world tree-planting charity projects through the game, similar to "Ant Forest" in the world of synthesis games.
TikTok e-commerce data service platform Didagou has announced the completion of tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A round financing, with OXYZ Seafirst Capital investing and Viet Hai Capital serving as the exclusive financial advisor. This round of financing will be used to improve the platform construction and the systematic layout of Southeast Asia's operational services.
Zoom has announced plans to acquire Workvivo, a six-year-old Irish start-up focused on improving internal communication and culture within companies. Founded in Cork in 2017, Workvivo has accumulated a considerable list of clients, including Amazon, Ryanair, and PayPal.
Lululemon previously acquired the fitness mirror brand Mirror for $500 million in 2020 and launched it as the Lululemon Studio home fitness business. However, the development of Lululemon Studio has not been ideal. A spokesperson for Lululemon said they are shifting the focus of Lululemon Studio's development from hardware-centered products to digital application services.
Grab announced that it will launch currency conversion features in the second half of this year. In addition, Grab is collaborating with WeChat, Alipay, Ctrip, Kakao T, and Booking.com to use Grab's Southeast Asian taxi service and payment through these platforms.
Netflix added 1.75 million subscribers in the first quarter, with a total of 232.5 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter. After experiencing the first customer loss in 10 years a year ago, the company has taken a series of measures to expand its customer base, including launching ad-supported services and beginning to restrict password sharing.
Netflix announced that it will introduce new password-sharing restrictions in wider regions, including the United States, by the end of June, and will soon end the DVD rental business that the company was founded on.
Recently, Anke Innovation released its 2022 financial report. The report shows that Anke Innovation recorded a total revenue of RMB 14.251 billion for the full year, a YoY increase of 13.33%, and a net profit of RMB 1.143 billion attributable to shareholders of the listed company, a YoY increase of 16.43%. In terms of regional revenue, North America remained the largest contributor to revenue with RMB 7.253 billion, a YoY increase of 14.39%; Europe achieved revenue of RMB 2.928 billion, a YoY increase of 11.27%; Japan and the Middle East achieved revenue of RMB 1.795 billion and RMB
◉ Entertainment & Gaming
Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI have been using chat content from the Reddit forum as a free training tool to develop new AI systems. Reddit says that many companies download and process chat content from the forum through application programming interfaces (APIs), and Reddit plans to charge these companies for use.
According to the enterprise search app, Qichacha, there has been a business change in Wanyouyinli (Ningbo) Electronics Technology Co., Ltd. recently, with Shanghai MiHoYo Algo Technology Co., Ltd. added as a shareholder. According to Qichacha's information, the company was established in 2021 and its business scope includes integrated circuit chip design and services, sales of semiconductor device-specific equipment, IoT technology services, software development, etc. According to its official website, the company is an XR-specific intelligent chip design company.
People in Latin America are so obsessed with social media that they spend much more time on it than anywhere else in the world. Currently, users are continuing to grow, and this year is expected to be the only social platform to break double-digit percentage growth, with TikTok having 17.2 million new users. This will bring the total number of TikTok users in Latin America to 162.5 million.
TikTok CEO Zhang Yiming: A team of tens of thousands has been established in Ireland to review and remove inappropriate content, and "maximizing user usage time" is not the company's goal
TikTok CEO Zhang Yiming said at the TED 2023 conference on April 20 that TikTok has established a team of tens of thousands of employees and robots in Ireland to review and remove any improper or offensive content. He emphasized that "harmful issues" are not unique to TikTok and that its competitors, including Facebook and Instagram under Meta, and YouTube under Google, also face similar issues. However, he stressed that TikTok takes this matter seriously.
Lilith's second self-developed SLG game "War Medal" has launched on all domestic platforms. Less than a month after the last round of testing ended, the game soared to third place on the iOS free list after opening for pre-download on April 19. According to the official website, the game has more than 3.4 million reservations across all platforms. At the time of writing, "War Medal" ranks 106th on the iOS game bestseller list
◉ Product Development
Elon Musk said in a recent interview that he will launch his own AI platform "TruthGPT," an AI that seeks truth to the maximum extent possible in an attempt to understand the nature of the universe. This is clearly a challenge to OpenAI's popular chatbot ChatGPT.
Kunlun Universe has officially released the billion-level language model "Tiangong" and announced the start of invitation testing today. "Tiangong" was jointly developed by Kunlun Universe and China's leading AI team, Qidiang Intelligence. It is the first double-billion-level language model in China that is comparable to ChatGPT, and it is another generative AI product following Kunlun Universe's AI drawing product "Tiangong Qiaohui."
◉ Top Ranking
- Hurun releases the 2023 Global Unicorn List, with ByteDance, SpaceX, and Ant Group in the top three.
According to the Hurun Research Institute's "2023 Global Unicorn List," the number of unicorns worldwide has reached 1,361, an increase of 303 from a year ago. ByteDance remains the world's most valuable unicorn, worth CNY 1.38 trillion, followed by Musk's SpaceX, valued at CNY 945 billion. Ant Group dropped one spot to third place, with a value of CNY 830 billion. ChatGPT's company OpenAI is one of the best-performing unicorns globally in the past year, with a seven-fold increase in value to CNY 138 billion, rising from 272nd globally to 17th.
As of March, Apple's revenue in the Indian market for the past year reached a record high of nearly USD 6 billion, up almost 50% from the previous year's USD 4.1 billion. Apple is set to announce its Q2 financial report on May 4 local time. In the year ending in March 2022, Apple reported sales of INR 333.8 billion (approximately USD 4.1 billion) in India. On April 11, Apple announced on its official website that it will open two new retail stores in India, with the Mumbai store opening on April 18 and the Delhi store opening on April 20. It is reported that Apple CEO Cook will preside over the opening ceremonies of the two stores.
Recently, staff at the BMW MINI booth at the Shanghai Auto Show allegedly treated Chinese and foreign visitors differently when handing out free ice cream. After the incident was exposed on Weibo, many netizens expressed anger and dissatisfaction. BMW MINI apologized through its official account, claiming "management was not meticulous, and the staff was negligent." Less than 20 hours after the apology, BMW MINI issued another apology through its official account, explaining that the four or five "foreigners" in the video were employees