Today’s news: Meituan acquired Light Years Beyond for RMB 2.065 billion; WHO: Coke’s sweetener may cause cancer; AI company raised US$1.3 billion, second only to OpenAI; WeChat Pay apologized for the high campus payment rate; B The station responds to the establishment of a trading ecological center
Meituan acquires Light Years Beyond for RMB 2.065 billion
On the afternoon of June 29, Meituan issued an announcement, saying that it had completed the acquisition of shares outside Light Years at a price of about 2.065 billion yuan. According to the announcement, the total consideration for the acquisition includes cash of about 233 million US dollars, debt commitment of about 367 million yuan, and cash of RMB 1. Previously, Wang Huiwen, the co-founder of Light Years Beyond, left for medical treatment and recuperation due to physical reasons.
"The acquisition of leading AGI technology and talents through the acquisition has the opportunity to strengthen its competitiveness in the fast-growing artificial intelligence industry." Meituan explained in the acquisition announcement. Meituan said that after the acquisition is completed, it will continue to support the Lightyear team's exploration and research in the field of large models.
Meituan announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that Light Years Away is a leading AGI innovator in China, founded by Mr. Wang Huiwen, the co-founder of Meituan. It is committed to promoting the realization and comprehensive popularization of AGI in China. Light Years Away's current management and technical teams have a high level of experience developing deep learning frameworks.
WHO: Sweetener in cola may cause cancer
On June 29, it was reported that aspartame will be listed as a "possibly carcinogenic substance to humans" for the first time in July this year by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the cancer research agency of the World Health Organization (WHO).
Aspartame is one of the most common artificial sweeteners, mainly used in beverages such as diet cola. As people pay more and more attention to health and weight control, all kinds of sugar-free drinks are becoming more and more popular.
In response, domestic beverage brands Genki Forest and Nayuki’s Tea responded that their products do not contain aspartame.
AI companies raise $1.3 billion, second only to OpenAI
On the evening of June 29, Beijing time, Inflection, a California-based artificial intelligence startup, announced the completion of the latest round of financing of US$1.3 billion, led by Microsoft, Nvidia and three billionaires (Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt) . Inflection was last valued at $4 billion, according to Forbes. This round of financing will be used to support Inflection's self-developed first artificial intelligence assistant called Pi.
Inflection is considered one of OpenAI's six major rivals. The company's CEO Mustafa Suleyman was once one of the founders of Google's artificial intelligence laboratory DeepMind. In January 2022, due to differences in ideas with Google, he left and founded Inflection.
After this round of financing, Inflection has become the second most-funded generative artificial intelligence startup with a total financing of US$1.525 billion, second only to OpenAI, which raised US$11.3 billion.
WeChat Pay apologizes for high campus payment rates
According to news on June 29, many colleges and universities across the country recently announced that they will suspend the use of WeChat payment from July 1. The reason is that WeChat began to charge service fees for campus payment scenarios, with a rate as high as 0.6%.
According to the announcement of Northwest University, in order to protect the interests of teachers and students, the WeChat code scanning payment service for all-in-one card users on campus will be suspended from June 30, and channels such as the one-card campus card, the Bank of Communications App, Cloud QuickPass, and Alipay will be used normally. This means that college students may find it difficult to use WeChat payment in campus consumption scenarios.
Later on the 29th, WeChat Pay issued an apology statement stating: "Due to our poor transmission of individual adjustments to the payment rate for college life service scenarios, which caused everyone's misunderstanding and trouble, I would like to apologize to the majority of schools, teachers and students. In profit scenarios, we will continue to maintain a zero-fee preferential policy.”
Station B responds to the establishment of a transaction ecological center
According to news on June 29, Bilibili issued an internal email that multiple teams will be integrated to establish a new first-level department trading ecology center, and the company COO Li Ni (Carly) will also be in charge.
According to the email, the trading ecology center will merge with the e-commerce platform department. At the same time, the product and operation team of the original e-commerce business department, as well as some teams of the main station business center/delivery project team, will also be merged into the trading ecology center. In response, Bilibili officially responded that after the establishment of the transaction ecological center, it will further strengthen the company's product and technology infrastructure in commercial transactions, and turn "transaction and consumption" into a platform capability. At the same time, serve the needs of users and UP owners, and build a trading field with more ecological characteristics of Bilibili.
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