Microsoft Pours Billions into Expanding OpenAI Partnership; Chinese NFT Platforms Expand into Hong Kong

by Hannah Dillon on 24th Jan 2023 in News

In today's ExchangeWire news digest: Microsoft enhances its investment into OpenAI partnership; China's NFT platforms move into Hong Kong to avoid compliance risks; and Disney announces it will apply Hulu's ad targeting capabilities to Disney+ from April.

Microsoft expands OpenAI partnership

Tech giant Microsoft has announced that it has committed to a “multi-year, multi-billion-dollar” investment in OpenAI. The increased funding is intended to accelerate the integration of OpenAI’s AI systems into its products.

The ChatGPT creator stated that Microsoft’s investment will be used to fund independent research and develop “safe, useful and powerful” AI systems.

China’s NFT platforms move into Hong Kong

China-based platforms for Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are moving into Hong Kong to work around compliance risks. China’s NFT industry currently stands in a tenuous position with regulatory bodies, encouraging platforms to migrate to the special administrative region.

Pengfei Wang, CEO of one of mainland China’s biggest NFT platforms ShucangCN, stated the company was “in the process of launching a simple NFT platform in Hong Kong in about two weeks.”

Disney+ to adopt Hulu's ad targeting options

From April, Disney+ will begin using some of Hulu’s ad targeting capabilities as Disney strives to automate over half of its ad sales business.

Speaking ahead of the company’s annual Tech & Data Showcase for advertisers, Disney advertising president Rita Ferro stated that the rollout will begin with “some of the basic stuff: age, gender, some geo-targeting. And then the full suite of targeting in July.”