0 Comments
0 Shares
149 Views
Directory
Directory
-
Please log in to like, share and comment!
-
WWW.NINTENDOLIFE.COMNintendo's Lawsuit Against Palworld Is "A Clear Case Of Bullying", Says AnalystThe drama continues.Patent analyst Florian Mueller has released an extensive examination into the lawsuit filed against Palworld developer Pocketpair from Nintendo. In it, he describes Nintendo's actions as "a clear case of bullying" against Pocketpair, citing the former's status as a "far older and larger company" with "extensive experience in patent prosecution and patent infringement litigation" (thanks, GameRant).It was recently revealed that Nintendo would be seeking an injunction against Palworld to halt sales in Japan, with the additional possibility of Nintendo looking to escalate the dispute in further jurisdictions. The company is also seeking a payment of 5 million yen with an additional 5 million going to The Pokmon Company, totalling the equivalent of around $66K. Although the monetary damages are said to be negligible, it is the injunction that could hold the most long-term significance.Read the full article on nintendolife.com0 Comments 0 Shares 156 Views
-
TECHCRUNCH.COMFrom self-driving cars to AI that writes enterprise software: Cogna founder raises $15MA founder who was an early mover in the race to build autonomous vehicles has raised $15 million for his next act: a startup that claims its AI can write enterprise software on its own.Cogna as the U.K.-based startup is called is led by Ben Peters, the technical co-founder of FiveAI (the self-driving startup that was acquired by Bosch in 2022). Notion Capital is leading the Series A, with Hoxton Ventures and Chalfen Ventures also participating. It comes on the heels of Cogna, founded in May 2023, raising a seed round of $4.75 million earlier this year from a number of investors, including Peters FiveAI co-founder Stan Boland and Herman Hauser, the founder of Acorn Software.The focus of Cogna is the world of enterprise resource planning. ERP is a dry but very necessary software component in the running of organizations, covering everything from procurement and supply chain and inventory management through to risk assessments, finance and human resources. Typically large enterprises can pay up to billions of dollars in contracts with systems integrators and consultancies to handle their ERP, either by customizing off-the-shelf software for clients, or writing custom applications from the ground up, to fit an organizations particular needs. In typical AI startup fashion, Peters believes that this work is best done, and can be compressed into, an AI platform built for the purpose. While some challenges have been significantly trickier for AI to address than others, there have been some early signs of ERP potentially being one area where it might stick, and for Cogna to potentially become one of the players delivering on that pitch. A year since launch, Cogna has signed up customers that include the U.K. gas distributor Cadent Gas and infrastructure and utilities service provider Network Plus.To be clear, none of our customers think of it as ERP software, Peters said in an interview. For them, theyve got a problem which isnt solved by using SAP or [another] legacy system. We deliver a custom, precision-built piece of software for that. They experience [it] ike a classic piece of SaaS, but it happens to have been built specifically for them, specifically for their workflow. And its written by our AI.Cogna balances a mix of generative AI with other kinds of tooling to actually put together its custom software. Non-technical teams can describe their pain points in natural language, and the Cogna does the rest, the company claims. Were a team of experts in domain-specific languages, compilers, AI and reliable and scaleable enterprise SaaS, Peters said. These days, its not uncommon to come across AI startups leveraging multiple large language models simultaneously depending on a particular task at hand its the customization that makes a startup unique and that is the case here, too. Peters said that the language models used for people to interact with its platform come from a variety of providers that include OpenAI and Anthropic. These are a key part of our Natural Language Compiler, Peters told TechCrunch over a call.On top of that, Cogna is building an engine so that the software can truly write itself, said Hussein Kanji, the co-founder of Hoxton Ventures.In doing so, Cogna is an example of how generative AI which saw a viral explosion with the launch of consumer-accessible services like ChatGPT is indeed being folded into enterprise usage and more complex applications. That is important because a number of foundational AI companies, like OpenAI, have made it clear that they, too, have ambitions to tap into the enterprise market, a highly lucrative area that will help them generate the vast revenues that investors expect. Kanji likens what Cogna is doing to Cursor, the code building tool from OpenAI-backed Anysphere. We broke the news last week that Anysphere is in the middle a massive, unsolicited bidding war among investors that want to back it, valuing Anysphere as high as $2.5 billion on the back of massive business growth, so the area is clearly very hot. Thats kind of what Cogna is also doing, he said.Based on his experience at self-driving tech company FiveAI, Peters is adept at spotting openings in the market early, but he also has experience in how to shift gears, so to speak, when plans dont go as you expect them to. We had cars driving around London in 2018, he recalled. [But] we then pivoted to providing the development environment to develop a stack for other companies that were building their own electronic design automation stack. We were running a million simulations a day by the time we sold the company.Five.ai, which had raised around $78 million in funding was valued at $216 million in its last round before it was acquired by Bosch for an undisclosed sum.Cogna now plans to go up against classic IT consultancies such as Wipro and CapGemini.The investment into Cogna is the first from Bryan Gartner, formerly of Khosla Ventures, who joined Hoxton as its newest partner last year.0 Comments 0 Shares 146 Views
-
TECHCRUNCH.COMSwiggys public debut will test Indias appetite for $1B+ IPOsSwiggys upcoming IPO on Wednesday will finally give many analysts a public comparable for what has been long considered to be the Indian internet stock: Zomato. It will also test the nations appetite for IPOs that can scale past the $1 billion mark.For its IPO, Swiggy has already secured $1.4 billion from institutional investors including Norways sovereign wealth fund, BlackRock and eight of the top 10 Indian mutual funds. Still, it will enter a public market where large tech companies stocks have struggled historically three years since its $2.5 billion offering, Paytm is still trading 47% below its IPO price.More than a dozen Indian tech startups have gone public in the last four years, but the market has shown scant interest in large IPOs. Beauty and wellness e-commerce company Nykaa is still trading 53% below its debut price, and Star Health and Alliance Insurance Company remains 48% below its IPO price three years on.Startups that raised less than $500 million in India have performed incredibly well, in comparison.India has emerged as a hotbed for tech IPOs this year even as the U.S. market remains muted. All eyes are on Swiggys IPO at the moment, particularly as many growth-stage startups and their investors are eyeing a similarly large listing over the next 24 months.Furthermore, for many Indian startups that were based in the U.S. and Singapore, moving their official HQs back to India would let them better comply with local regulations to do such an IPO. Its also an opportunity to reap the benefits of a market whose benchmark index had risen more than 10% in the past year. Up to three dozen startups could be shifting their domiciles back to India in the coming years, according to investors.A slide from venture firm WEHs Presentation Last Week showing the markets preference for smaller IPOs. Image Credits: TechCrunchThe prospects for Swiggys IPO looks good especially given that rival Zomatos stock has surged over 100% since its $1.3 billion listing in 2021, reaching a market cap high of $29 billion this year. In comparison, Swiggy is seeking a valuation of $11.3 billion.It helps that the Indian food delivery market has long been a duopoly between Zomato and Swiggy. And what makes the offer even more attractive to investors is that Swiggy is among the dozen firms attempting to disrupt the $1.1 billion Indian retail market that is still dominated by millions of mom-and-pop stores.Swiggys Instamart is among the top three quick-commerce businesses in the country, which promise deliveries of groceries, wellness and beauty products and much more within 10 minutes. Whether these companies will be able to revolutionize the broader retail market in India remains to be seen, but they have already captured 56% of the online grocery delivery market from e-commerce firms, according to JPMorgan.Quick-commerce firms such as Instamart, Zomato-owned BlinkIt, Zepto, BigBasket, and Minutes are changing consumer behavior in urban Indian cities, home to about 80 million people. Together, they are on track to record sales of more than $6 billion this year, according to TechCrunch estimates.I dont think Swiggy will just be an e-commerce company in the future, but I do think that given the growth rate of Instamart, and the total addressable market its going after, the percentage of e-commerce in Swiggy is going to have a dramatic change, said Swiggy co-founder and chief executive Sriharsha Majety (pictured above at the top) in an interview with TechCrunch.Underpinning this business model is a unique supply chain system that involves strategically setting up hundreds of discrete warehouses, or dark stores, within kilometers of residential and business areas. This allows the firms to make deliveries within minutes of an order.This approach differs from that of e-commerce players like Amazon and Flipkart, which have fewer but much larger warehouses in areas where rent is cheaper and farther from residential areas.Swiggy operates over 600 such facilities, while Zomatos Blinkit ended the September quarter with 791 stores.Swiggy, which counts Prosus, SoftBank, Accel and Elevation among its backers, has scaled Instamart to 30 Indian cities. But many investors and analysts have expressed doubts about the viability of extending the quick-commerce model to smaller Indian cities and towns. Do we have an operating model for city number 500? Honestly, I dont know, said Majety. Asked if the model works on city number 75, Majety said: I think that probably exists. We will see city 75 having quick commerce.Swiggys IPO will also show how willing investors are to bet on business models that prioritize growth over profits amid challenging global conditions.For Dutch investor Prosus, Swiggys listing could deliver a three-fold return. It will also be the venture firms biggest hit from India, where its $1 billion-plus gains from Byjus have all but evaporated. Accel is expected to see a more than 35-fold return, one of its largest in the past five years.0 Comments 0 Shares 149 Views
-
TECHCRUNCH.COMBrazilian fintech Tako emerges from stealth with sizable seed round led by a16z and Ribbit CapitalRunning payroll is hard in any country, but perhaps especially so in Brazil thanks to consistently changing laws and extremely influential unions that make it significantly harder to get it right. Fernando Gadotti struggled with this as the co-founder and CEO of DogHero, LatAms version of Rover. When Gadotti left the company in 2022, after selling it in 2020, he decided this is where he wanted to focus next.Every time the payroll came around, theres just a struggle, like its dreadful, many hours, just like double-checking data back and forth, and we couldnt really get any insight that we needed, Gadotti told TechCrunch. [We were] pretty much working in the dark, and as we kept growing, it hit me that these problems really werent just inconvenient; theyre actually slowing the company down. Were wasting a lot of time in busy work.Just a few months after leaving DogHero, Gadotti started working on So Paulo-based Tako, an employee life cycle platform that automates tasks like onboarding and payroll to save companies time and bring all their employee information into one place. Tako also provides employees with a dashboard to view information and access an interactive paystub meant to increase transparency.Gadotti said that while there are U.S. legacy payroll companies operating in Brazil, like ADP, it makes sense to have a local solution because Brazils payment system is quite unique. He said laws around payroll change frequently. There are also 10,000 unions companies often have employees in more than one, he said that update their rules a few times a year, too, and sometimes have more power than the actual laws.Tako uses an LLM (large language model) to keep up with these constant changes. The LLM ingests the labor law and union law data and digests it so Takos developers can keep the code base up-to-date. He said they want to keep humans in the loop to ensure accuracy, but having the LLM get a head start saves a lot of time.Tako launched its product in 2023. Gadotti said that the company processed tens of millions of dollars in payroll as its been operating in stealth but declined to share more details on its customers. Gadotti said the company is currently targeting mid-market white-collar companies with between 100 and 500 employees in the professional and financial service categories.The strategy we took is that we are not trying to boil the ocean, Gadotti said. We want to start in a segment we know before venturing into industrials or more complex areas. We are starting in more simpler segments; as the company evolves, we are going to more complex segments in the future.Tako is emerging from stealth with a sizable $13.2 million seed round co-led by Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. The round also included ONEVC and the founders of Ramp. Gadotti said the company plans to put the majority of capital toward research and development in addition to doubling or tripling headcount on its R&D team.There are a lot of potential areas that Tako could expand into in the future, like the vast world of employee benefits. Gadotti said the company does plan to expand as it grows into building more features like instant payments.In addition to competing with legacy companies like ADP, there are multiple other HR tech startups in the country like Gupy and Caju, which are both more focused on other areas within HR and employee management. But if Tako expands into these areas, which it likely will, these companies could also become strong competitors.The name Tako is Japanese for octopus, which Gadotti said is how he thinks about the business. Takos platform is meant to be the brain of employee data with its tentacles reaching out into different areas of employee management.We want to focus on the whole employee life cycle, Gadotti said. We are constantly listening to our customers pain points and where they want us to help them on.0 Comments 0 Shares 168 Views
-
WWW.AWN.COMAldi, McCann, Psyop Team for Latest Kevin the Carrot Holiday AdTis the season for a new Kevin the Carrot holiday advert! Since its inception in 2016, Aldi and McCann Manchester have collaborated each year with industry powerhouse Psyop, with fans looking to the annual release as the initiator of the most wonderful time of the year.Created in association with Riff Raff Films, this years installment sends the viewer on a caper braving the broiler, precarious mince pies, and other cuisine-related boobie traps as Kevin and Katie try to save the Festive Spirit from the nefarious thieves at Humbug Headquarters. Concluding with yet another feather in Kevins cap, the Festive Spirit is set free and fills empty tables with holiday feasts underscoring the ever-present message of celebrating the cheer of community and the magic of bringing families together.Enjoy!Last years Kevin and the Christmas Factory was named 2023s most effective ad, according to System1s data, although the latest installment may be the teams most ambitious chapter yet.Kevin the Carrots world just keeps getting juicier, and the team at McCann and Aldi are the zest we need to keep things fresh as we cook up new ways to expand the Kevin-verse, said Psyop directors Todd Mueller and Kylie Matulick. With a decade of Kevin marinating in all our minds, hes got so much more room to sprout! Were ready to serve up more flavor-filled adventures and show just how far Kevin can peel ahead! Kevin the Carrot is more than a character; hes become a cherished tradition and a holiday icon, added Psyop EP Jim Brattin. Each year, were inspired to create something even more memorable, and this seasons film is truly our most enchanting yet"Brattin executive produces, while Amy Fahl produces. VFX are created by Cristina Camacho, Steve Hallquist, and Billy Morris. Thomas Sali crafted the 2D animation, with Matthias Bauerle serving as 2D supervisor.Source: Psyop Journalist, antique shop owner, aspiring gemologistL'Wrenbrings a diverse perspective to animation, where every frame reflects her varied passions.0 Comments 0 Shares 206 Views
-
WWW.ARTOFVFX.COMMufasa: The Lion KingMovie & Games TrailersMufasa: The Lion KingBy Vincent Frei - 11/11/2024 Journey back to the Pride Lands with Mufasa: The Lion King! Dive into the untold story of Simbas legendary father and witness his rise from a humble cub to the most beloved king!The Animation and VFX are made by:MPC (VFX Supervisor: Audrey Ferrara)The Production VFX Supervisor is Adam Valdez.Director: Barry JenkinsRelease Date: December 20, 2024 (USA) Vincent Frei The Art of VFX 20240 Comments 0 Shares 193 Views
-
WWW.ARTOFVFX.COMMufasa: The Lion KingMovie & Games TrailersMufasa: The Lion KingBy Vincent Frei - 11/11/2024 Journey back to the Pride Lands with Mufasa: The Lion King! Dive into the untold story of Simbas legendary father and witness his rise from a humble cub to the most beloved king!The Animation and VFX are made by:MPC (VFX Supervisor: Audrey Ferrara)The Production VFX Supervisor is Adam Valdez.Director: Barry JenkinsRelease Date: December 20, 2024 (USA) Vincent Frei The Art of VFX 20240 Comments 0 Shares 189 Views
-
ENTAGMA.COMThrowing A Snowball With MPMThrowing A Snowball With MPMWe havent forgotten about the other big addition to Houdini with 20.5: The MPM solver! So to get into the holiday spirits, let s simulate a snowball. In this video, were covering the full process from simulation, to postprocessing and finally to rendering.Liked it? Take a second to support Christopher Kopic on Patreon!0 Comments 0 Shares 306 Views
-
ENTAGMA.COMThrowing A Snowball With MPMThrowing A Snowball With MPMWe havent forgotten about the other big addition to Houdini with 20.5: The MPM solver! So to get into the holiday spirits, let s simulate a snowball. In this video, were covering the full process from simulation, to postprocessing and finally to rendering.Liked it? Take a second to support Christopher Kopic on Patreon!0 Comments 0 Shares 294 Views