Synapse Invest was founded in 2019 with the mission of offering a diverse range of thematic investment products centered around innovation. Our journey began with the launch of our first Actively Managed Certificates (AMCs) in the closing weeks of 2019, and we are now proud to celebrate more than five years of consistent growth and…
Earlier this year, Google unveiled an eye-popping text-to-video games model called Genie that allowed to build basic playable games in 2D based on a short description. Six months on, AI in video gaming has made significant advances with gaming giants Roblox and Tencent presenting in recent days their own Generative AI technology that now allows to…
Chinese video game Black Myth: Wukong, an adaptation of the 16th-century Chinese tale “Journey to the West”, has made the headlines this week as it became an instant global hit, claiming more than 1 million concurrent players on gaming platform Steam within an hour of its Tuesday release and 2.2 million players by Wednesday (without…
There have been signs of improving activity lately on the two leading Metaverse platforms, Roblox and Epic. While the former posted growth in average daily active users in a 17-22% range in recent quarters, the latter opened its Fortnite virtual world to major brands Lego and Disney that have or are in the process of…
Even if it’s a decades-old industry, video games remain an incredibly young business that stands at the forefront of new technologies including, obviously, AI. Since the beginning of the year, AI has been all about multimodal models and notably text-to-video, with OpenAI revealing its generative model Sora. But Google pushed the envelope of what’s possible,…
We commented last month that video game maker Epic’s legal victory against Google in its antitrust lawsuit was likely to have serious implications for the app store duopoly and for the mobile gaming industry. As both Apple and Google generally charge commissions of as much as 30% to app developers who have few other options,…
This morning, the Chinese administration issued new draft rules for online games aiming to limit spending and tackle game addiction. While the document lacks details, the new rules would introduce spending limits (prohibition of high-priced transactions, recharge limits…) and prohibit certain user engagement methods (rewards for daily log-in and first-time/multiple purchases). We believe that the…
Take-Two, one of the largest positions in both our Metaverse and Gaming certificates, is now expected to release in the next couple of weeks the highly anticipated trailer for the next chapter in the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) video game franchise, GTA VI. For those who are not familiar with the franchise, GTA is an…
Niantic, the developer of massive mobile hit Pokemon Go, released in recent weeks in collaboration with Japanese game maker Capcom its newest location-based and augmented reality (AR) title, Monster Hunter Now. The game lets users explore the world and achieve missions while fighting gigantic monsters, the AR technology allowing to blend the digital monsters with…
Microsoft’s $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard has faced many antitrust hurdles since its announcement in January 2022, but the legal challenges now seem to be easing. In the US, a federal judge rejected yesterday the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) request for a preliminary injunction to block the deal, considering that the FTC had not…