tech:

taffy

Chukong Technologies Raises $50M

chukong_chinaMobile entertainment company Chukong Technologies has secured $50 million in a Series D funding led by New Horizon Capital, with participation from existing investors GGV Capital, Sequoia Capital, Steamboat Ventures and Northern Light. The latest investment brings the company’s total funding to $83 million to date.

Haozhi Chen (Chukong Technologies, CEO): With the proliferation of smartphones across China and countries worldwide, we see a significant opportunity not only to publish polished games and entertainment content but also to provide tools for developers to access emerging mobile platforms and overcome challenges caused by device fragmentation. There is a bigger play here than offering discrete mobile game experiences, and that’s what we’re going after.

Chukong Technologies develops and publishes first-party mobile games under the Coco brand (formerly branded as PunchBox). The company also works with  developers like Gameloft, Nexon, Disney, Gamevil, and Konami as a localization and publishing partner market under its CocoaChina brand.

The company says it has more than one billion sessions per month, 350 million activated downloads, and 63 million monthly active users. More than 400,000 developers in over 150 countries use Cocos2D-x (a cross-platform open source game engine, developed by the company) including 70 percent of the top grossing games in China and companies like Zynga, Wooga, Gameloft, Glu and Konami.

Chukong Technologies is based in Beijing with offices in Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei and Menlo Park, California.

Just in

Apple sued in a landmark iPhone monopoly lawsuit — CNN

The US Justice Department and more than a dozen states filed a blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Apple on Thursday, accusing the giant company of illegally monopolizing the smartphone market, writes Brian Fung, Hannah Rabinowitz and Evan Perez.

Google is bringing satellite messaging to Android 15 — The Verge

Google’s second developer preview for Android 15 has arrived, bringing long-awaited support for satellite connectivity alongside several improvements to contactless payments, multi-language recognition, volume consistency, and interaction with PDFs via apps, writes Jess Weatherbed. 

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is paid more than the heads of Meta, Pinterest, and Snap — combined — QZ

Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman has been blasted by Redditors and in media reports over his recently-revealed, super-sized pay package of $193 million in 2023, writes Laura Bratton. 

British AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman joins Microsoft — BBC

Microsoft has announced British Artificial Intelligence pioneer Mustafa Suleyman will lead its newly-formed division, Microsoft AI, according to the BBC report. 

UnitedHealth Group has paid more than $2 billion to providers following cyberattack — CNBC

UnitedHealth Group said Monday that it’s paid out more than $2 billion to help health-care providers who have been affected by the cyberattack on subsidiary Change Healthcare, writes Ashley Capoot.