Blizzard Aims to Bring BlizzCon Back in 2023 🎊
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Blizzard Aims to Bring BlizzCon Back in 2023 🎊
After three years without an in-person event, video gaming company Blizzard is looking to bring back BlizzCon in 2023.
Blizzard is “committed to bringing back BlizzCon in 2023,” Mike Ybarra, Blizzard Entertainment president, said in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times.
“We previously announced we’re taking a pause on BlizzCon while we reimagine it for the future but do want to return to a live event that enables us to celebrate the community,” Ybarra said.”
We recently hired a new leader of BlizzCon, April McKee, who is hard at work on that plan. We are committed to bringing back BlizzCon in 2023,” he added.
From 2005 to 2019, BlizzCon was an annual event conducted by Blizzard which hosted fans, typically featuring new game announcements, previews, and more. However, the in-person event did not take place since 2019.
The event was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the covid-19 pandemic, with a replacement online-only event dubbed BlizzConline taking place in February of 2021. Now, the company is looking to bring back the in-person event next year.
Virgin Galactic Partners 🤝 With Boeing Subsidiary to Build Motherships ✈
Space tourism company Virgin Galactic announced a deal with Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences to build next-generation motherships for its suborbital rocket planes.
Under the contract, Aurora Flight Sciences will build two special aircraft at its facilities in Mississippi and West Virginia.
The final assembly of the motherships will take place at the Galactic’s facility in Mojave, California. Each of the special planes will be designed to fly up to 200 launches per year.
“Our next generation motherships are integral to scaling our operations. They will be faster to produce, easier to maintain and will allow us to fly substantially more missions each year. Supported by the scale and strength of Boeing, Aurora is the ideal manufacturing partner for us as we build our fleet to support 400 flights per year at Spaceport America,” said Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier.
Virgin Galactic says that outsourcing the work will offer it access to labor, minimize supply chain disruptions, and lead to faster production times. The first mothership is expected to enter service in 2025.
Riot Blockchain Starts Moving 🚛 Its Bitcoin Mining Rigs to Texas
Riot Blockchain, one of the largest bitcoin miners in the United States, started moving its bitcoin mining rigs from a hosting site in New York to its own mine in Whinstone, Texas, in a bid to reduce operating expenses.
In an announcement, the mining company said that it has moved some mining equipment from a facility called Coinmint in Massena, New York, to minimize the company’s operating expenses by reducing electricity costs and eliminating all escrow fees.
Riot’s move comes as temperatures in many parts of Texas soared 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and power demand increased for air conditioners to keep residents cool.
Riot said that the transition will include a relocation of miners to the company’s New York facility by way of a miner swap agreement that Riot has entered into with another Bitcoin mining counterparty.
The company said that two air-cooled buildings are under construction, one has been completed, while the other has started the initial deployment of miners as the company completes some electrical work.
German Deeptech Startup Celus Raises $25.6 Million in Series A 💰
Celus, a German-based provider of AI-powered automation software for electronics engineering, has raised $25.6 million in its Series A funding round.
The funding was led by Earlybird Venture Capital along with participation from DI Capital. Existing investors Speedinvest and Plug & Play also participated in the round.
A host of individual investors, including former Rolls Royce CEO Sir John Rose, chairman of TSMC Peter Bonfield, Paul Gojenola, VP of hardware development at Google’s Nest, among others also participated.
Celus was co-founded in 2018 by Tobias Pohl, Alexander Pohl, and André Alcalde. The startup has developed a cloud-based engineering platform that supports electronics engineers with rich component data from electronic manufacturers and adds automation to accelerate the design process.
The company plans to use the latest proceeds to further prioritize rapid growth with a focus on the US market, strengthen its commercial team, and further enlarge its technology leadership.
Around the Web 🌐
Porter Finance Closes Bond Issuance Platform: Ethereum-based DeFi credit platform Porter Finance has shut down its bond issuance platform, citing a lack of lending demand from the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. The move comes amid falling crypto prices as wider equity markets reflect recession concerns.
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