TECHNOLOGIES,BUSINESS
The Sandbox | August 10, 2022
Following a round of seed investments by The Sandbox, Com2uS, CRIT Ventures, and Formless Capital, Firefly Games CEO Michael Zhang has announced the formation of a new venture called MetaWorld Entertainment. Key partners in this new metaverse company include The Sandbox, the leading decentralized virtual gaming world and subsidiary of Animoca Brands, and Com2uS, a global multi-content platform leading the way in the blockchain gaming spaceThis announcement of MetaWorld Entertainment's formation comes at a pivotal time in the evolution of the Web3 space. Michael Zhang has described MetaWorld’s vision of Web3 as “the venue for entertainment in the new digital age. The metaverse is where audiences will play, engage, and interact with new levels of immersion, unlike anything we have seen before. Michael, who will serve MetaWorld as its CEO said, “We have the advantage of leveraging great technology and our know-how of creating engaging and meaningful experiences for people. This allows us to think more from the user’s perspective: what meaningful experiences can we bring to them and what value will this give them.
MetaWorld Entertainment will be an all-encompassing entertainment company, bringing concerts, events, and games to the global market through metaverse platforms, including The Sandbox. MetaWorld will serve as both a developer and publisher of multiple experiences and games, empowering audiences around the world to interact with the metaverse like never before. MetaWorld will maximize the immersive experience using the support of key partners such as Agora and their real-time audio technology. MetaWorld will also utilize the Web2 game publishing experience of its partners to target a massive gaming audience while using the "play-and-earn" model that offers high-quality and engaging games through which players can also earn virtual currencies. By combining and utilizing its unique gaming resources, platform advantages, and business cooperation in technology and entertainment, MetaWorld plans to bring brand-new play-and-earn entertainment experiences to the Web3 era to drive broader adoption.
“The Sandbox is pleased to support the entry of veteran gaming entrepreneur Michael Zhang into the metaverse by establishing his next gaming venture as a metaverse builder studio, We believe he will leverage his experience and team creativity to build fun, engaging, multiplayer games and diversified experiences on The Sandbox platform, starting with Atari games available in Alpha Season 3 and with more brand names soon to be announced.”
-Sébastien BORGET, COO and Co-Founder of The Sandbox.
Com2uS President Kyu Lee was similarly optimistic, “The next wave of Web3 builders will be more focused on the content and experience that are built on the platforms. Michael and his team have both the strong vision and the track record of working with top tier brands to scale and deliver.” Com2uS has a long history of bullish growth in bleeding edge markets around the world.
"Brands are looking for impactful ways to participate in the Web3 ecosystem," said Scott Levy, MetaWorld Advisor and former Managing Director of NBA Asia. "Michael has a proven track record of creating successful content and MetaWorld will become a resource for brands and consumers to meaningfully engage in the metaverse."
MetaWorld Entertainment
MetaWorld Entertainment, a revolutionary Web3 company to create unique experiences that allows users to engage with Web3 in a completely new and immersive way while enabling the world to connect through entertainment.
About The Sandbox
The Sandbox, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, is one of the decentralized virtual worlds that have been fueling the recent growth of virtual real estate demand, having partnered with major IPs and brands including Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, The Rabbids, Gucci Vault, The Walking Dead, Snoop Dogg, Adidas, Deadmau5, Steve Aoki, Richie Hawtin, The Smurfs, Care Bears, Atari, ZEPETO, CryptoKitties, and more. Building on existing The Sandbox IP that has more than 40 million global installs on mobile, The Sandbox metaverse offers players and creators a decentralized and intuitive platform to create immersive 3D worlds and game experiences and to safely store, trade, and monetize their creations.
About Com2uS
Com2uS is a South Korean mobile and online game development and publishing company established in 1998. Com2uS develops games for Android, iOS, and other platforms, and has been targeting the global market for almost 10 years, even before the introduction of smartphones. Based on their vast pool of know-how gained from their establishment of foreign offices and experience in the NA and EU markets, Com2uS has become a very competitive company. The company's corporate offices are located in the United States, Korea, Japan, and China. In 2007, Com2uS was listed on the Korea Stock Exchange (KOSDAQ: 078340).
About Firefly Games
Firefly Games excels in development, globalization, and localization for mobile games, with rich experience in game production and distribution. Firefly has cooperated with Hollywood studios to develop many mobile games based on popular IP, including DreamWorks' Universe of Legends, Skydance's Terminator: Dark Fate, and MGA Entertainment's match-three mobile game LoL Surprise! Room Maker, among others. Firefly also represents the North American distribution of Asian mobile games such as My Name is MT2.
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MEDIA AND BROADCASTING
Veritone, Inc | August 09, 2022
Veritone, Inc. (NASDAQ: VERI), creator of aiWARE, a hyper-expansive enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) platform, has announced an extension of its work with Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support its Media & Entertainment (M&E) customers. Last year, Veritone joined the AWS for Media & Entertainment initiative that helped content creators, rights holders, producers and distributors easily identify industry-specific AWS capabilities and accelerate transformation across five key industry innovation centers. By continuing to support the AWS for Media & Entertainment initiative, Veritone reaffirms its commitment to modernizing how IP owners of all sizes produce, distribute and ultimately monetize their content.Veritone brings a portfolio of content-enabling technologies and services that, when running on AWS, allows for end-to-end production in the cloud. With aiWARE as the enterprise platform, companies can build and deploy AI-powered workflows while seamlessly integrating with their current datasets, applications and processes.
“Working in lockstep with AWS allows us to deliver the most current content production, management and monetization tools, which help M&E customers to overcome the challenges of processing digital content at greater speeds and depth with metaverse and Web3 activations, Combining the power and scale of AWS along with our aiWARE technology, applications and services ensure that IP owners and content creators have a complete arsenal to create and maximize revenue opportunities regardless of where they exist or appear.”
-Ryan Steelberg, president and co-founder of Veritone
With Veritone, we can combine our skill sets and capabilities to offer a revolutionized way to create and monetize content no matter where creative workforces are located, said Chris Blandy, global leader of strategy and business development for media & entertainment, AWS. Leveraging Veritone’s AI platform on AWS, content creators and distributors are unlocking new ways to monetize existing libraries and create more engaging programming. The demand for content is not slowing down, and having the ability to identify and access the right asset immediately is essential for meeting the demanding pace of production.
Veritone and AWS magnify benefits for Media & Entertainment organizations
With aiWARE serving as a foundation to incorporate AI and intelligent workflow capabilities into a content production environment, M&E brands can leverage aiWARE-based applications on AWS, such as Veritone Digital Media Hub, to streamline the management of unstructured data to activate the monetization of their vast media archives. By automating metadata tagging and creating intelligent and actionable media data lakes, content creators can efficiently uncover valuable content and ensure new assets do not become lost, allowing brands like the San Francisco Giants and CBS News to activate decades worth of content.
“Leveraging AI to structure our digitized archive of 80-plus years of Giants baseball history, aiWARE and Digital Media Hub have accelerated and expanded our content projects,As part of the Veritone ecosystem, we like how we can incorporate more tools and capabilities as needed, future-proofing our content production for omnichannel fan engagement including Web3.”
-Paul Hodges, vice president of content and entertainment, San Francisco Giants.
As the next phase of content creation becomes more immersive and driven by “phygital” experiences, creators need tools to extend the content lifecycle to reach and access customers wherever they are consuming media. Veriverse, a portfolio of metaverse-ready solutions for the Enterprise, provides that much-needed bridge M&E brands are trying to cross to capitalize on the Web3 opportunity. Winner of back-to-back NAB Product of the Year awards for Veritone Voice and Veritone Avatar, Veriverse adds another layer of capability that is positioned to become industry standard.
Veritone Voice and the rest of the Veriverse portfolio change how brands engage with their customers. With the ability to deploy internationally, including in the U.K., Veritone accelerates international product and service implementations while also taking into account GDPR standards, said James Poulter, CEO, and co-founder, Vixen Labs. From conversational AI applications to human-driven digital personas in immersive environments, we can truly make the digital experience feel human and authentic anywhere.
In addition to Digital Media Hub and Veriverse, the Veritone portfolio of applications on AWS includes Attribute and Discovery, broadcast solutions designed to track and search content and provide proof-of-performance metrics. Additionally, through Veritone One, a performance-based audio and influencer agency creating impactful advertising for some of the world’s most recognizable brands, and Veritone Licensing, a full-service content licensing and clearance service activating content from some of the world’s most sought-after archives, companies have a one-stop-shop to implement a modern content practice to unlock their full revenue potential. Veritone’s artificial intelligence products and services are available at www.veritone.com.
About Veritone
Veritone (Nasdaq: VERI) is a leading provider of artificial intelligence (AI) technology and solutions. The company’s proprietary operating system, aiWARE™ powers a diverse set of AI applications and intelligent process automation solutions that are transforming both commercial and government organizations. aiWARE orchestrates an expanding ecosystem of machine learning models to transform audio, video and other data sources into actionable intelligence. The company’s AI developer tools enable its customers and partners to easily develop and deploy custom applications that leverage the power of AI to dramatically improve operational efficiency and unlock untapped opportunities. Veritone is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, and has offices in Costa Mesa, California; London and San Diego. To learn more, visit www.veritone.com.
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MEDIA AND BROADCASTING,BUSINESS
Cisco and Qwilt | August 08, 2022
Cisco and Qwilt announced the deployment of their unique content delivery solution across the North American network of Kinetic by Windstream, to enable superior streaming performance to its customers throughout the United States. The adoption of Cisco and Qwilt’s open caching solution considerably improves the quality and efficiency of live and on-demand video delivery while increasing Kinetic’s network capacity for other forms of media.
Kinetic will deploy Qwilt’s open caching technology across its 170,000 miles of fiber network across the US. The deployment helps Kinetic address the growing number of live streaming events and other media consumption, as households increasingly turn to streaming services and expect broadcast quality to the home. Cisco’s edge compute and networking infrastructure, combined with Qwilt’s Open Edge Cloud for Content Delivery Solution, makes this possible by preparing Kinetic’s network to support increasing data volumes and improving the streaming experience.
Gary Cooke, Senior Vice President of Engineering for Kinetic, said: “We tell our customers ‘High Speed for Here’ – whether live, on-demand, or other forms of media content. By partnering with Qwilt and Cisco, we’re ensuring our fiber-backed network has the scalability and capacity needed to handle the growth in demand for all forms of streaming content. By integrating innovative edge technologies across our network, we’re bringing high quality content closer to our customers than ever before.
Open caching, an open architecture developed and endorsed by the Streaming Video Alliance, offers a platform that federates content delivery infrastructure deployed deep inside service provider networks. It provides open APIs, protection, and security mechanisms for content publishers. The open caching approach helps service providers quickly deploy an edge delivery footprint and addresses the needs of global and regional content providers for more capacity, consistency in content delivery, and performance assurance. The deployment also creates a telco cloud foundation for future use cases, such as website delivery and edge computing.
“Streaming is the future of content delivery, but it doesn’t have to mark the end of great quality content experiences. By embracing content delivery at the edge through open caching technology, service providers are embracing a new model to manage their network capacity. Working alongside Qwilt, we’re equipping Kinetic by Windstream with the tools needed to bring fantastic experiences to its customers across North America and in doing so, democratize capacity across its nationwide infrastructure.”
-Theodore Tzevelekis, Vice President and Head of Business Development, Mass-scale Infrastructure Group, Cisco
Alon Maor, CEO and Co-Founder of Qwilt, said: “Soaring demand for streamed content brings an urgent need for service providers to scale their networks for the future. Through Cisco and Qwilt’s united vision, we empower service providers like Kinetic by Windstream to do more with their assets while accelerating their digital transformations. We look forward to helping modernize the way Kinetic delivers content and ready their growing network for the future of content experiences.
About Qwilt
Qwilt’s mission is to deliver connected experiences at the quality they were imagined. Its model is built on partnerships with service providers and content publishers, globally, to create a fabric that powers high-performance delivery of media and applications at the very edge of neighborhoods, big and small. Qwilt’s open architecture and inclusive business model make local edge delivery more accessible than ever before, unlocking more reliable, higher quality-of-experience at greater scale than previously possible. A growing number of the world’s leading content publishers and cable, telco, and mobile service providers rely on Qwilt for Edge Cloud services, including BT, Telecom Argentina, Telecom Italia, and Verizon. Founded in 2010, Qwilt is a leader of the Open Caching movement and a founding member of the Streaming Video Alliance. Qwilt is backed by Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Cisco Ventures, Disruptive, Innovation Endeavors, Marker, and Redpoint Ventures. For more information, visit www.qwilt.com.
About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in technology that powers the Internet. Cisco inspires new possibilities by reimagining your applications, securing your data, transforming your infrastructure, and empowering your teams for a global and inclusive future. Discover more on The Newsroom and follow us on Twitter. Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.
About Kinetic
Kinetic by Windstream is a business unit of Windstream Holdings, a privately held FORTUNE 1000 communications and software company. Kinetic provides premium broadband, entertainment and security services through an enhanced fiber network to consumers and businesses primarily in rural areas in 18 states. The company also offers managed communications services, including SD-WAN and UCaaS, and high-capacity bandwidth and transport services to businesses across the U.S. Additional information is available at GoKinetic.com. Follow us on Twitter at @GoKineticHome. From Fortune. ©2021 Fortune Media IP Limited. All rights reserved. Used under license. Fortune and Fortune 1000 are registered trademarks of Fortune Media IP Limited and are used under license. Fortune is not affiliated with, and does not endorse products or services of, Windstream.
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