Monthly Archives: August 2022

Yandex’s sale of media assets to VK includes yandex.ru homepage

Russian search giant Yandex has finalized the sale of its two flagship media properties to local rival VK, owner of the eponymous social network. The deal to sell the products, Yandex’s algorithmically sorted news aggregator (News) and blogging recommender platform (Zen), was inked back in April. But today’s binding agreement goes further than that —…

Indian crypto entrepreneur’s blockchain venture seeks seed funding at $200 million valuation

Indian crypto exchange WazirX’s co-founder Nischal Shetty is in advanced stages of talks to raise a maiden funding round for his new venture, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Shetty is raising $20 million to $30 million in a seed financing round for his blockchain startup Shardeum, sources said, requesting anonymity as the deliberations…

Dutchie launches new cannabis Point of Sale platform with its own dual-screen register

Dutchie today is announcing a new cannabis point of sale platform, including a dual-screen terminal for dispensaries. Called Dutchie POS, this comes just weeks after the company announced a new payment platform, Dutchie Pay. With Dutchie POS and Dutchie Pay, the cannabis tech company is now offering cannabis operators one of the most comprehensive platforms…

Ready Player Me, a platform to build dynamic cross-game avatars for virtual worlds, raises $56M led by a16z

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg was roundly mocked for the bad graphics in his preview of a new expansion of Horizon Worlds, Meta’s metaverse effort. His quick response promising better avatars for the actual launch speaks to just how much appearances do matter in these situations. Now, in a spot of perfect timing, a startup out…

Disney-backed Inworld raises new cash from for its AI-powered virtual characters

If software is eating the world, AI isn’t far behind. AI-powered text-, art- and audio-generating systems will soon make — and already are making — their way into the tools people use every day, from programming environments and spellcheck plugins to concept art creation platforms. The video game industry is no exception to this, and…