What Names Like Gemini, ChatGPT, Llama Tell Us About AI Branding

Brand name queries may include other keywords, such as “reviews” or “coupon codes.” Most imply a commercial intent — an opportunity to convert a searcher into a buyer. Consumers often search a company’s name on Google when considering a purchase. NASA named its first official chief artificial intelligence officer on Monday, bringing David Salvagnini to the agency’s leadership team as federal agencies look to harness AI in operational capacities. Bard is quite similar to ChatGPT by OpenAI, but it doesn’t have features like generating images, and sometimes it doesn’t respond to a certain prompt, perhaps due to its testing and training limitations.

Had he known ChatGPT was going to change the world, Sam Altman said last year, he would have spent more time considering what to call it. “It’s a horrible name, but it may be too ubiquitous to ever change,” he told comedian Trevor Noah during a podcast. Angel Gonzalez, chief marketing officer and co-founder at Snappy Kraken, said it was important to humanize the AI so it’s less intimidating and becomes more of a conversational tool. This is especially needed in the wealth management space, where AI adoption has been slower than other industries.

For Customers

But when there is industry contraction, companies might realize their customers are confused by so many names. The goal with the research is to get ahead of the curve, said Lexicon founder and CEO David Placek, who added he’d like to create an AI technology branding practice within the agency. While there has been more interest from AI software companies than from other areas like health care, he thinks that will change in the next year or two.

Additionally, GoDaddy’s domain auction platform is a significant feature, offering a marketplace for buying and selling unique or premium domain names, including .AI domains. In addition to domain registration, Hostinger’s portfolio of services includes a variety of web hosting options such as shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting, along with managed WordPress hosting. This versatility ensures that customers can find hosting solutions that align with their specific needs, whether they are running a small personal blog or a large-scale business website. Don’t worry if your ideal .com domain name isn’t available—alternative top-level domains (TLDs) are becoming increasingly popular and recognized by customers. While a .com domain has its advantages, a high-quality site with excellent user experience matters more than your TLD. Your shop name is the first impression Etsy customers will have of your online business, and can even determine your success on the platform.

These days, even as offbeat names are less in favor, we do still see some startups going this route. To illustrate, we used Crunchbase data to put together a sample list of 15 such companies founded in the past two years that have raised millions in funding. Scores of others have also at some time secured large-cap valuations with offbeat names and branding strategies. There are routes volunteers can take to address issues like Friedman’s, she said. According to the platform’s librarian manual, book records can be deleted in appropriate circumstances. May said she can change authors’ names to alert users of piracy or other fraud.

When data is biased, embeddings such as “doctor” and “nurse” will uphold gender biases. In 2007, White and a handful of other Black job applicants won a settlement of over half a million dollars paid by the national retailer. In an interview, she said she was not surprised by Bloomberg’s findings on AI systems continuing to show bias towards names. “If organizations truly have an interest in a fair and inclusive hiring process and are using AI software, they should ChatGPT have up-to-date diverse data sets and mask out names since that usually gives clues to gender, race, and ethnicity,” White said. From there, the first and last names were randomly paired up for each group, resulting in 800 demographically-distinct names. There is a widespread misconception that AI tools are less biased than humans, because they’re working off a larger set of data, said Abeba Birhane, a senior advisor for AI accountability at the Mozilla Foundation.

Testing GPT

In the same comment section, Gasparyan acknowledged the concerns of some users about bias and ignoring non-binary individuals, but didn’t offer any concrete answers. The outcry against the service has been so great that Genderify tells The Verge it’s shutting down altogether. “If the community don’t want it, maybe it was fair,” said a representative via email. Genderify.com has been taken offline and its free API is no longer accessible.

Kris Jenner came up with the name “Psalm,” and their final child together, “North,” actually came from a joke that Jay Leno made about their family. For each job description, we measure how often each demographic group was ranked as the top-qualified candidate (“Selection Rate”). We compare the best performing group to all other groups (“Impact Ratio”) to test for adverse impact — the negative effect a seemingly neutral employment practice has on a protected class. All prompts were issued using OpenAI’s Chat API — specifically “gpt ” and “gpt-3.5-turbo-0613” — with default parameters and new sessions for each prompt.

The problem is that this assumption rarely gets tested — nor do the models get closely scrutinized and tested, said Birhane. A growing body of evidence continues to show that “these systems stereotype,” she said. OpenAI added that businesses may choose to strip out names before feeding resumes into a GPT model. The company said it has published blog posts and system cards — which are like AI instruction manuals — describing its models, including their capabilities and limitations.

But a Bloomberg analysis found that the best-known generative AI tool systematically produces biases that disadvantage groups based on their names. As generative AI continues to advance, expect a deluge of new human-named bots in the coming years, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a computer-science professor at Brown University, told me. “There’s a difference between what you expect from a ‘help assistant’ versus a bot named Tessa,” Katy Steinmetz, the creative and project director of the naming agency Catchword, told me.

• In years past, it’s been argued that human language is unique and that animals lack both the brains and vocal apparatus to converse.
• Correcting for bias in large language models remains a major challenge for AI companies and researchers.
• Plus, you can bypass listing fees and categorize your products the way you want to.
• In the meantime, Friedman said she’s still not completely opposed to the technology, but cautioned that guardrails are necessary.
• It makes some logical sense as well, given the role AI is expected to play in automating away some of our blander business tasks.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Other names on the list were CogniChain, LogicLink, SynapChain, MindFlow, CogniPath, and IntelliThread.” “For complex reasoning tasks this is a significant advancement and represents a new level of AI capability,” the company said. “Given this, we are resetting the counter back to 1 and naming this series OpenAI o1.” There was a moment when OpenAI fans believed the new model might be called “Strawberry” (for reasons only the most hardcore stans would understand). But in its press release announcing o1, the company explained how it ultimately settled on the name. “Every Brittany (but not Britney) peaked in high school.” I’m sorry if your name is on this list.

If the name’s too difficult to remember, you’re missing out on word-of-mouth marketing. Building off a hiring study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Bloomberg selected first names from a list of people registered to vote in North Carolina. For names belonging to voters who were Black or White, we identified the names that were distinct to just one race at least 90% of the time (for example, 93% of voters named Malik are Black). From these lists of demographically-distinct names, we determined which names appeared most commonly for Black and White voters, respectively.

Scientists using AI tools have discovered that elephants likely have unique names for each other, according to a new study. In the U.S., where drug naming rules are among the world’s strictest, there are still drugs on the market with strikingly similar names that were “already out of the barn” when regulators began to tighten their drug naming rules, says Alexander. Consider the branded seizure medication Klonopin and clonidine, a generic blood pressure drug; or Lamisil—an antifungal used to treat yeast infections—and Lamictal, an anti-epileptic drug and mood stabilizer. Starting an Etsy shop with the perfect name can help you get a strong start selling online or expand your existing business. But while it’s a great platform, Etsy has its limitations, especially when it comes to communicating with and marketing to your audience. One prediction from Placek is that there will be a “gravitational pull” for companies to have a lot of new names in their portfolio.

Expanding your business to sell on Etsy is a great way to diversify your revenue streams and reach a new audience. The shop below is called “Tara Jayne Designs,” incorporating the first and middle names of the shop owner. Placek suggested health care ChatGPT App as an example of where a company might apply AI to find what leads to a bigger generation shift in various types of treatment. Last week, Lexicon released its initial findings from a survey that explores what consumers and developers think about AI.

Should I change my Etsy shop name?

AlsoAsked is a handy tool for collecting questions from “People also ask” boxes. However, for vital brand queries, manually search and interact with the questions directly. “People also ask” boxes are dynamic — clicking results produces more questions. When Google released Bard in March 2023, it didn’t allow the chatbot to generate code. Bard relied on the company’s LaMDA language model at the time, which lacked expertise or training in programming-related areas.

Numerous registrars offer varying levels of service, pricing, and additional features, making the choice far from straightforward. Once you’ve come up with a list of ideas, you’ll need to go back and sort through them to find the top contenders. Consider organizing your list using word banks or categorizing them based on theme. Don’t forget to check name availability on key social media platforms like X, Facebook, and Instagram.

A Q&A knowledge base section on your site can answer many of these questions. Regardless, interlink all questions and answers so the pages rank well in brand queries. Controlling branded search results, especially in Google’s autocomplete suggestions, is key for the coming AI-powered search. The image below is an AI-generated answer to the query “spirit halloween reviews.” The snapshot states, “Reviews for Spirit Halloween are generally negative.” Not many consumers will likely buy from that brand if they read it.

We can never quite predict what names will be popular (I didn’t think Chozen would be on this list!), but the changes and trends in baby naming keep me on my toes. But these days, we’re seeing parents bestow names typically given to girls on their sons. John Legend and Chrissy Teigen named their son Wren, while Rihanna used Rose as a middle name for her son Riot. This generation of parents loves to play with gender roles and social expectations, and it shows.

Importantly, the ChatGPT application is built upon GPT, but has additional guardrails. Bloomberg designed an experiment to measure gender and racial bias across OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. To see our full findings and underlying data, please refer to our methodology and its accompanying GitHub repository. To overcome bias, Shaddox suggested that people ask the AI to increase its objectivity and look at “objective criteria,” something that SeekOut tries to do. “SeekOut, at its core, is about removing bias and increasing objectivity,” he said.

The company’s platform stands out for its user-friendly interface, simplifying the domain registration and management process. This approach is particularly beneficial for those who may not have extensive technical expertise but are seeking to establish or enhance their online names to name your ai presence. IONOS also offers competitive pricing for .AI domain registrations, making it an appealing choice for those looking to enter the AI space without a significant financial burden. The company’s approach to .AI domain registration is particularly noteworthy.

Notably, the vast majority of these simple names were shared by a number of other companies, often including other recently funded startups. “In our experience, the only trend in naming is imitation,” he said, as newer startups seek, either consciously or not, to capture the magic of an existing transformative brand. Importantly, GPT’s rankings differed across roles favoring and disfavoring candidates solely based on names and the job descriptions we used as a reference. More than two decades ago, a Black woman named Kalisha White applied for a team leader position at Target, but her application was ignored. Suspecting that her race may have been a factor in her resume being overlooked, White decided to conduct an experiment. She sent in another application, but this time she used a different name and fewer qualifications.

But if they ever become the starting quarterback for the Buckeyes, or a huge actress in Hollywood, don’t be made if they come up with a more memorable pseudonym for the media. Odul, the worker based in California, had initially been hopeful about her job hunt. Now, several months into the process, she said she’s demoralized by the process. At the same time, Odul said she feels deep grief at the idea of changing her name to one that makes her sound more palatable to employers. The trick also doesn’t address the underlying bias embedded in the system itself, which will always partially determine how AI models perform, said Birhane, the AI researcher with Mozilla.

Odul, a worker based in California, is one such job applicant who has agonized over whether she needs to take that step. She’s already received dozens of rejection letters in her current job search, and in the absence of any transparency on the process, she has wondered whether her non-Anglicized name was a contributing factor. “Not being from the United States, it’s been a challenging situation for my job search,” said Odul, who is originally from Turkey and asked that her last name be withheld for privacy reasons.

The expert explained that “names that end in ‘ai’ are easily pronounced in many languages, including indigenous languages, European languages, Japanese, and African languages,” Kihm told Business Insider. Of course, there are still older AI platforms with human names for enterprise software such as IBM’s Watson — which debuted in 2011 and was named after IBM’s founder — along with others like Salesforce’s Einstein. When the researchers played recorded calls, CSU press reports, elephants responded affirmatively to calls that were addressed to them by calling back or approaching the speaker.

GPT regularly failed adverse impact benchmarks for several groups across the tests. Bloomberg found at least one adversely impacted group for every job listing, except for retail workers ranked by GPT-4. As the founder of the boutique US firm NIAH Recruiting, she spends her days sifting through hundreds of resumes, hoping to fill dozens of roles at companies that have hired her to find matching employees. If we decide that a site has violated any of the above the domain will be suspended. Even if the registrant promises to modify the content we will not enable the domain. Registering and using .ai domains has become easier over the years, although there have been challenges.

Users say Glassdoor added real names to user profiles without their consent

In all three MTE models, white names were preferred in a full 85.1 percent of the conducted tests, compared to Black names being preferred in just 8.6 percent (the remainder showed score differences close enough to zero to be judged insignificant). When it came to gendered names, the male name was preferred in 51.9 percent of tests, compared to 11.1 percent where the female name was preferred. The results could be even clearer in “intersectional” comparisons involving both race and gender; Black male names were preferred to white male names in “0% of bias tests,” the researchers wrote.

A few decades ago, Lexicon would often have three or more months to go through the process with a client. However, that’s now down to six or seven weeks, Placek said, adding that sometimes it’s less than that. AI is skilled at tapping into vast realms of data and tailoring it to a specific purpose—making it a highly customizable tool for combating misinformation. “By selecting a name that encapsulates the AI model’s unique reasoning capabilities, you position your product as a pioneering solution in the market,” o1 said.

Separately, create YouTube alerts for new videos mentioning your company or products. Your choice should align with your specific requirements, whether they be budget constraints, the need for extensive domain management tools, hosting services, or exceptional customer support. Each registrar brings its strengths to the table, and the right fit depends on your individual or business objectives and the level of support you anticipate needing as you establish your presence in the AI domain space. 101domain has established itself as a distinguished ICANN-accredited domain registrar, renowned for its extensive range of domain extensions, including the increasingly sought-after .AI domains. Catering to a diverse customer base, 101domain offers a blend of domain-related services and technical prowess, making it a notable player in the domain registration landscape.

And while elephants do use other rumbles to communicate—including a “let’s go” rumble—these three are the most likely to include any tie to specific names. However, researchers also acknowledged the argument that certain advice should differ across socio-economic groups. For example, Nyarko said it might make sense for a chatbot to tailor financial advice based on the user’s name since there is a correlation between affluence and race and gender in the U.S. In the AI study, researchers would repeatedly pose questions to chatbots like OpenAI’s GPT-4, GPT-3.5 and Google AI’s PaLM-2, changing only the names referenced in the query. Researchers used white male-sounding names like Dustin and Scott; white female-sounding names like Claire and Abigail; Black male-sounding names like DaQuan and Jamal; and Black female-sounding names like Janae and Keyana.

Subsequent research has shown that changing one’s name in a job application can still serve as an effective way to score an interview with a potential employer. “By ‘automated,’ we mean decisions made entirely by AI, without any human involvement,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in an email. ​​Testing GPT for bias is similarly challenging — asking ChatGPT, “Do you discriminate? Bloomberg wanted to isolate whether GPT treats names differently for protected classes in a hiring context. Large language models like the one powering Bard excel at creative writing.

Its name cleverly combines its product (maps) with a descriptor that encapsulates the journey and adventure its customers seek to commemorate. “Conquest” implies a triumphant journey, perfectly aligning its brand identity with its customers’ desire to showcase their travels. In the thriving subscription box market, many popular brands include “box” in their name (think BarkBox or Birchbox). Hot sauce brand Fuego Box puts a spicy spin on this convention, combining the Spanish word for fire (“fuego”) with “box” to create a name that’s both familiar and intriguing for hot sauce enthusiasts.

Ex-Impossible Foods exec launches foodservice tech startup

It also offers easy fiat onboarding and multi-party wallets (via Fireblocks). Mythical has now raised $270 million for its blockchain gaming platform, which recently announced its first three development partners. Wemade’s Singapore-based web3 subsidiary Wemix has invested in five Chinese blockchain game developers, through a joint fund with Mirana Ventures, earmarked to blockchain games. Line Next has announced a $140 million strategic investment from local private equity company Crescendo Equity Partners, which will be used to accelerate the growth of its DOSI blockchain social and gaming platform in 2024. ArenaX Labs, the developer of AI-centric fighting strategy game AI Arena, has announced a $6 million funding round, which was led by Framework Ventures.

Omnichain protocol Holograph takes total funding to $11 million with a new funding round of $3 million, led by Mechanism Capital and Selini Capital. Other investors included Northrock Capital, Arca, Courtside Ventures, and Hartmann Capital. Swedish-headquartered game developer ChatGPT App Patriots Division has announced $5 million in combined funding from its seed and Series A rounds. Crypto investor Momentum 6 led the Series A round, with other investors including iAngels, Cointelligence Fund, Xborg, Andromeda, Cogitent Ventures, and Cluster Capital.

How AI startup Conflixis is protecting hospitals from corrupt doctors

Other investors include Saison Capital, GDV Venture, Arcane Group, Korean web3 gaming outfits Planetarium and Marblex, and more. US-based developer Proof of Play has raised $33 million in a seed round for onchain turn-based RPG Pirate Nation. The round was led by a16z and Greenoaks, with other participations including Mercury, Firebase, Zynga, Alchemy plus angels such as Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasian, Diogo Mónica (Anchorage Digital) and the founders of Twitch.

The company has also unveiled plans to launch two forthcoming games, as well as a gaming-focused L3, also built on zkSync. Carv protocol provides a data layer in web3 and AI enabling gamers and users to own and monetize their data. With the new funding, the company aims to expand its data layer, which it’s so far has integrated with over 40 chain ecosystems and 700 games. Web3 tech developer Cartridge has announced $7.5 million series A funding. Led by Bitkraft, the round also included StarkWare, Fabric Ventures, Dune Ventures, Primitive Ventures, and Ergodic Fund.

We are now doing more things like bundling streaming with broadband services. Our belief, really from day two, has been that there are a lot of broadband providers out there that most people don’t know about and that are small, including companies in rural areas. We have [business relationships with] more than 200 now, and that is still scratching the surface. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Stardust is a platform enabling game developers to create blockchain games across the likes of Polygon, Solana, Immutable X and Flow.

Plus, our upcoming NFT collection will introduce AI-powered avatar NFTs, adding another layer of innovation,” commented Avalon founder and CEO Sean Pinnock. “Tevaera, one of the first gaming projects on zkSync, is on a mission to unlock the next era of web3 games. They’ve shown remarkable resilience and technical acumen building an EVM compatible, multiplayer framework for on-chain games,” commented Matter Labs Head of web3 entertainment and media Rich Kim.

What Is Crowdfunding?

In one telling incident from his childhood, Musk and his brother planned to open a video game arcade near their school. The sportswear manufacturer has invited fans, organizations and athletes to use the campaign hashtag on social and to share their personal stories, opinions and solutions on how to remove gender barriers in sports. Participants also have the option to submit ideas directly on the adidas website. By fostering conversation, and also partnering with influencers and advocates working towards women’s equality in sports, adidas hopes to raise awareness—and generate solutions—around the obstacles women face in athletics. Aerie’s decision to promote authenticity and user-generated content has seen the retailer become a real threat to established market leaders, and the company now approaches a $1 billion valuation. Sometimes brands move in the opposite direction and take a gamble by highlighting issues that aren’t trending in their respective industries.

Investors included CoinFund, Dapper Labs, Animoca Brands, Play Ventures and Hashed. Animoca Brands has extended its recent funding with a further $50 million, taking that round to $138,888,888. Funders included Bitkraft Ventures, previous investor CMT Digital, The Xchange Company, Khaled Verjee and Zyshan Kaba. Animoca Brands and Divergence Ventures were the lead investors with IDEO CoLab, Sfermion, Hypersphere Ventures, SkyVision Capital and angels such as Axie Infinity co-founder Jeffrey Zirlin and Aave CEO Stani Kulechov also participating.

• ” Don’t be afraid to present this as data points, to remind everyone of money you saved or accomplishments that started with you or projects you headed up.
• “The candidate doesn’t have any of that.” His firm levels the field by providing that information, but, he says, this research is not a magic bullet.
• The content on this site is for entertainment purposes only and CBS Sports makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of the information given or the outcome of any game or event.
• Ultimately, they still want growth, and they see the value of bundles.
• The browser-based Super Smash Bros-styled game will be F2P with its blockchain elements described as “a web3-enabled version will be available for highly skilled players who can compete to earn rewards”.
• Formed in 2019 and previously known for its F2P mobile titles, Hungri is now working on web3 games, notably its forthcoming Polygon-basedhorse racing RPG Metahorse Unity, which is launching its first NFT mint on 31st August.

Param Labs is working on PC-based MMO game Kiraverse and creator platform Pixel to Poly. Currently operating Telegram-based tap game PixelTap, Pixelverse is working towards the game’s global expansion. The rest of the round included Sky Mavis co-founders Jeff Zirlin and Trung Nguyen, in addition to Pixels’ Luke Barwikowki, YGG’s Gabby Dizon, and Axie KOLs Cocobear, Freak and Cloudwhite. Crunchroll’s Kun Gao and Holly Liu (ex-Kabam, ex-Animoca) also participated.

Perforce is a competitor, but Gwertzman noted it is built for source code, not necessarily games themselves. Gwertzman also feels like this space should be independent of a game engine, as some developers don’t like the idea of being locked into a game engine.“This is the great unsolved problem of the game industry. Studios have all these millions and millions of files to build the game, and there are no really good tools to manage and version them effectively,” Gwertzman said. Berlin-based social gaming company SLAY has raised $5 million in a seed funding round led by VC firm Accel. Hash Rush developer Vorto Gaming has raised $4 million to build out its games and its platform ecosystem, which is based on the NEAR blockchain. CCP Games has announced that it’s raised $40 million to make a blockchain game based in the EVE Online universe.

GM of investment and business dev at Square Enix Hideaki Uehara commented, “Soccerverse stands out as the most innovative and unique game using blockchain features in the genre. We’re eager to continue our journey with it, now from the perspective of investors as well as fans”. One result of the round will see Double Jump Tokyo collaborating with SBI to expand its web3 offerings, including games and infrastructure, as well as working with Sony on its recently-announced Soneium blockchain.

As for Loot Labs, it looks to expand its loot box platform Boxed.gg, with a significant launch into Counter-Strike set for 28th October. Additionally, Kickstarter can’t be used for charity or cause donations, and projects can’t offer incentives like equity, revenue sharing, or investment opportunities. Kickstarter also prohibits projects involving items claiming to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent illnesses, political fundraising, drugs or alcohol, and any form of contests, coupons, gambling, or raffles. Founded in 2009, the platform has successfully funded more than 250,000 projects, with more than $8 billion pledged across all Kickstarter projects. These restrictions apply to who can fund a new business and how much they are allowed to contribute. Similar to the restrictions on hedge fund investing, these regulations are supposed to protect unsophisticated or non-wealthy investors from putting too much of their savings at risk.

What Companies Does Elon Musk Own?

Web3 game developer Illuvium has announced a $12 million series A funding round, which was co-led by Arrington Capital, King River Capital , Animoca Brands, and The Spartan Group. Among other investors were Arca, Selini Capital, Polygon Ventures, 32-Bit Ventures, Yield Guild Games, and more. Using utility token STYLE, users can pay a fee to transform their NFTs into 3D assets and avatars that can be deployed within Style’s ecosystem games and virtual worlds. Supported projects include The Sandbox, Roblox, Fortnite, GTA, League of Legends, Dota 2, Decentraland, Spatial, Mona, and Cryptovoxels. Elixir has previously received a similar investment from Square Enix, and raised a $14 million seed round prior to the launch of its ELIX token. It currently hosts over 150 games and claims over 1 million downloads since its launch.

• There are the top 5, and I think it still makes sense for them to use us.
• Apple threatened to sue, and Microsoft retaliated, saying it would delay shipment of its Microsoft-compatible software for Macintosh users.
• After attending college for two years, Allen dropped out and moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to work for Honeywell.
• The feature film, which is written and directed by Eli Roth, is based on the video game series developed by Gearbox and published by Take-Two.
• Local VC Hashed, which incubated the team, and the Sui blockchain, on which Xociety is deploying, led the round.

Broadband providers since the beginning have been giving away things, such as “sign up for internet and get a $200 gift card! “We’re fast, you could stream.” So what we realized was why wouldn’t they be giving away streaming services? We believe that by working together, men and women can create a brighter future for the games industry. A future where women have equal opportunities, feel safe and respected, and their voices are heard. A future where games are truly inclusive, diverse, and reflect the amazing creativity of everyone who plays and creates them. Building a More Inclusive Future TogetherChange won’t happen overnight.

Lee had been one of the driving forces inside All Raise to launch the venture capital mentoring sessions in the fall of 2017. The series of mentoring meetings already resulted in one funding deal being closed, and others still in talks. But, it was a lot of planning ceo platforms hints raising game to and work for the venture capitalists involved in each of the events. By March, Lee told the women of All Raise she had found a solution to help scale the office hours so the 1,600 women involved could actually receive advice outside of the 100-person events.

For instance, Oculus VR, an American company specializing in virtual reality hardware and software products, was funded through the site. In 2012, founder Palmer Luckey launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to make virtual reality headsets designed for video gaming available to developers. The campaign crowdfunded $2.4 million, 10 times the original goal of $250,000. In March 2014, Meta (META), acquired Oculus VR for $2.3 billion in cash and stock.

Similarly, the shoe company TOMS launched a social campaign closely aligned with the brand’s beliefs in philanthropy and addressing issues that matter. Since advocating for gun reform on its website and social channels, TOMS estimates consumers sent over 750,000 postcards to state representatives in the last year. Consumers are increasingly interested in learning about the humans who make up their favorite organizations. When a CEO has an active social presence, for example, 70% of consumers feel more connected to that brand. Of those respondents, almost two thirds (65%) say when a CEO uses social regularly it feels like real people run the business. For brands to build true connections with people, they need to meet consumers on their preferred communication channels and create content that puts a brand’s own people front and center.

Forte has raised $725 million in its Series B, taking its total raised to $900 million. Metaverse infrastructure outfit Hadean announced it has raised an additional $5 million to its initial funding round of $30 million. Mayhem is owned by Indian real-money gaming and esports giant MPL, which itself has raised over $150 million and which operates over 60 mobile titles across sports and casino. First announced in 2022, Migaloo — a working title — is a “create-to-earn” project that will combine Krafton’s game expertise with Naver Z’s experience with the metaverse, social networks and IP partnerships. The funding will be used to enable TinyTap’s ambition of expanding its web2 platform into a web3 education system, and to accelerate development in the edtech space by supporting teachers and promoters alike.

Table of Contents

“We are excited to accelerate development and revolutionize the gaming industry and bring web3 to the masses,” commented the team in a statement on X. The company is looking to scale its gaming technology Ephemeral Rollups, an engine designed to enhance the performance of fully onchain games and applications built on Solana. However, it’s seeding that activity with dungeon-based trivia Telegram mini-game SynQuest, which has attracted 250,000 players in its first couple of weeks. This influx of new funding will also see the company expand, with the introduction of R&D team Azra Labs, whose main focus will be to accelerate content creation with the integration of AI. In total, Azra has now raised over $68 million for what it calls its vision on “4th generation of mobile RPGs”, more particularly its in development flagship title code-named Project Legends. Web3 game studio Opti Games has completed a $2 million funding, which was led by L1D.

Other companies participating included Prosus Ventures (previously Naspers), Galaxy Interactive, Fabric Ventures, Alameda Research, AirTree Ventures, Reinventure, Apex Capital, and Gary Vee’s VaynerFund. There were also angel investors including Piers Kicks of Delphi Digital, Gabby Dizon of Yield Games, Sebastien Borget of The Sandbox, and Nikil Viswanathan of Alchemy. French developer Sorare has announced its $680 million Series B round for its fantasy soccer game. Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis has closed a $152 million Series B round, which values the company at $3 billion. Investors included Flow Ventures; LD Capital; Block0 Fund, Daedalus Syndicate; NEAR Foundation and others including Red Cave Ventures; ArkStream Capital; GFS Ventures; Polygon Studios Fund as well as funds from UAE and Hong Kong. Krafton and Naver Z have announced that they are investing $37 million (KRW 48 billion) into Migaloo.

The next community round begins Thursday 14th March, with a total of $990,000 worth of APRS, after which the sale among Ronin’s community members starts on 15th March. Designed for both web2 and web3 players, MetalCore is an open-world combined arms experience ranging from air vehicles and giant mechs to compact spaces for intense human scale combat. Singapore-based dev 9 Lives Interactive has announced a $3 million funding round, which was led by Mechanism Capital, with participation from Sfermion, 3Commas, Momentum 6 and others. LA-based Carbonated Games has announced a $13 million Series A funding round, which was led by Com2uS, with participation from a16z, Bitkraft, Cypher Capital, Blocore, Goal Ventures and WAGMI. Notably one of the investors is Impossible Finance, which ran the Ronin-based launchpad for Apeiron’s highly successful APRS token event.

Discovery CEO David Zaslav, saying that pay TV and broadband providers can serve as “fishing boats” for streamers, THR talked to Cohen about the state of the company and the industry. Education Ambassadors are schools, universities, and training programmes that integrate diversity and inclusion into their curriculums, and actively nurture the next generation of female game developers and leaders. Swedish developer ChatGPT Antler Interactive has raised $2.1 million from a range of investors to complete and launch its forthcoming PC game My Neighbor Alice. Dacoco, the developer of Alien Worlds, has raised $2 million in a private sale of the game’s Trilium (TLM) token. “StarkWare’s equity investment in Unstoppable Games strengthens our alignment and reaffirms their confidence in the impact that gaming will have on Starknet’s growth.

Some of the struggles of building new while improving old product will of course get solved with this cash, and the subsequent hiring that Dream Games can do (and it’s doing a lot of that, judging by the careers section of its website). The focus of the funding, and currently of Dream Games itself, is Royal Match, a puzzle game (iOS, Android) that launched globally in March. All Raise already saw more than 1,600 women sign up for the one-on-one mentoring sessions, which had been held in person with female venture capitalists in a few cities. The new version of the office hours program will add CEOs like Hartz to the list of available mentors and take some of the sessions virtual, so female founders anywhere can have access to the advice. And they did not sail off into the sunset and disappear from the workforce.

Apple threatened to sue, and Microsoft retaliated, saying it would delay shipment of its Microsoft-compatible software for Macintosh users. Apple had previously given Microsoft full access to their technology while it was working on making Microsoft products compatible for Apple computers. Gates had advised Apple to license their software but they ignored the advice, being more interested in selling computers. Following the development of software for IBM, between 1979 and 1981 Microsoft’s growth exploded. Staff increased from 25 to 128, and revenue shot up from $2.5 million to $16 million.