Quick news №29

We are approaching the end of the year: as if sensing this, the headlines are increasingly dazzling with interesting news feeds. We have collected the best harvest for you. Still, autumn is a time of harvest. Let's go!

We often mention GPT-3, this is one of the most powerful natural language processing models in the world from OpenAI. At the last Ignite conference, Microsoft announced that users of the new Azure OpenAI Service will have access to language models. It will be possible to use the obtained capacities in any area of ​​business, as far as imagination is enough: from processing customer requests to writing code.

Not announced, but the public still found out: the WhatsApp messenger is working on the "Communities" function in the new version of the application. Communities will be organized like channels in Discord: it is expected that this will allow Meta (more recently —  Facebook) to catch up with its competitors such as Telegram and Signal. Telegram, by the way, does not stand still either: now it is possible to officially place advertisements on the messenger platform. These are the first steps towards monetizing a service that has long been predicted to have a great future in terms of profitability.

Without prophecies, and already here and now, the Rallyware startup, whose co-founders include Ukrainians, as well as Ukrainian investors and an R&D office in Kharkiv, raised $22M. The platform developed by the company allows increasing the productivity and efficiency of distributed teams.

Another round —  for $3M —  was closed by the game developer KEK Entertainment of former Pixonic top managers Georgy Egorov and Oleg Poroshin. The Games Fund and Play Ventures became the lead investors, and, according to the investors, this is one of the largest, if not the most, pre-seed round to a gaming company from the CIS. By the way, experts from the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK) of the Higher School of Economics analyzed the video game market: their popularity has already reached the level of invincible messengers. This means that this growth in gaming is expected to lead to closer interaction between the business and the gaming industry.

If you are suddenly a Russian-speaking startup at growth stages A and B, with international revenues of $50,000 per month, showing a twofold growth from year to year, then there is good news. It is on these criteria that projects will be selected for financing by the new $100M Leta Capital Fund III. The main focus is B2B software products.

Thought we forgot about our favorite cryptoblock? How to forget when two iconic films last week found their sequel in the form of NFT. So, seven deleted scenes from "Pulp Fiction" with a bonus in the form of a film script written by himself at the OpenSea marketplace auction will be sold by Quentin Tarantino. And the Warner Bros. in honor of the release of the new part of the cult "Matrix" will release a whole collection of tokens: 100,000 red and blue tablets can be converted into a resistance fighter.

Finally, loud ups and inglorious falls, almost 2-in-1. The popular world and media series from Netflix "The Squid Game" has spawned not only a huge number of imitations and memes, but also a real cryptocurrency. It was launched at the end of October and grew by almost 2400% in 24 hours. It turned out that this is not the limit, and over the last week, SQUID experienced a one-day rise of 7500% to $2856 per coin, and then —  almost complete depreciation in 5 minutes. They say it was all one big SCAM scam. And how beautiful it began!

Have a productive week!