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Sony is making a bold bet on Africa’s video game industry. 

The Japanese consumer electronics and gaming giant has invested an undisclosed sum into Carry1st, a video game studio based in Cape Town, South Africa, via its Sony Innovation Fund venture arm, Carry1st told CNBC exclusively. 

The deal is a strategic investment that will see the two companies partner on a range of commercial opportunities. For now, the two companies are in the “exploratory stages” of that partnership.

Cordel Robbin-Coker, CEO and co-founder of Carry1st, said talks with the Sony Innovation Fund began about eight to nine months ago, and that his pitch to the PlayStation console maker was that Africa is the next big market to find growth in video games. 

“As large companies like Sony that have really strong footholds in tier-one and tier-two markets start thinking about where the next billion customers and gamers are going to come from, our pitch is that Africa is a prime market for that,” Robbin-Coker told CNBC in an interview. 

“We believe very firmly that there is an incredibly underrated console opportunity in Africa,” Robbin-Coker said, citing countries like Nigeria, Morocco and Algeria as places where console adoption is rising a lot. 

Sony is coming into an emerging gaming market with blistering growth potential. Sub-Saharan Africa’s gaming industry is expected to generate over $1 billion for the first time in 2024, according to research from Carry1st and venture capital firm Konvoy. 

Many gamers in Africa are buying consoles on “gray” markets — in other words, from vendors who’ve imported consoles from overseas to resell them locally, Robbin-Coker added. 

Expanding PlayStation in Africa 

One aspect of Carry1st’s partnership with Sony was about helping the games and entertainment giant expand PlayStation’s footprint in Africa. 

Sony forecast it would sell a record 25 million PlayStation 5 units in its 2023 fiscal year, which would mark the best year for any PlayStation console in history. The PS5 was initially blighted by shortages due to a scarcity of chips and supply chain disruptions.

Sony’s bet with its stake in Carry1st is that Africa will be the next major market to drive growth in PS5 sales.

“Our hope is that we can help [Sony] to expand their reach of PlayStation in the region and support them in a range of ways, including broader go-to-market strategies, as well as digital payments,” Robbin-Coker told CNBC.

He noted Carry1st could take advantage of the changing console business model, where sales have gone from primarily in-store payments for physical consoles and games to a more online experience marked by digital downloads, free-to-play games, and in-app purchases. 

Carry1st’s localized payment service Pay1st allows African gamers to buy games using local infrastructure, bank accounts, and payment methods including M-Pesa and mobile wallets. Game makers can monetize their games on Carry1st, the company’s online marketplace for games and add-on content. 

Original games in the pipeline  

Carry1st, founded in 2018, specializes in developing mainly social and casual puzzle-based mobile games for an African audience.  

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Carry1st currently only makes and scales games for other clients, like Activision. But the company is now planning to develop its own original titles this year, with development underway on three new games.  

Little is known about the original games for now, but Robbin-Coker says he is “very confident” about the road map for Carry1st’s original titles, and that he “firmly believes” the company is on track to launch its debut first-party game sometime in 2024. 

Carry1st is still an early-stage startup, but its growth has been on a tear in recent years. Carry1st says its revenues climbed nearly ninefold between 2021 and 2023. Carry1st said it was unable to give a fuller picture of its financials given the sensitivity of the numbers. 

Carry1st works with the likes of Activision, Supercell and Riot Games to bring Western game franchises like “Call of Duty: Mobile” and “Valorant” to Africa. 

The company is behind the mobile games “Mancala Adventures,” “SpongeBob Krusty Cook-Off” — made in partnership with Nickelodeon — “Ludo Blitz” and “Mine Rescue.” 

Sony’s investment in Carry1st marks the first financial commitment of its new flagship African venture fund, Sony Innovation Fund: Africa, which launched in October 2023 to invest in early-stage startups in Africa’s entertainment industry. 

Sony Ventures Corporate, Sony’s venture arm, allocated an initial $10 million to its Africa fund.  

Carry1st’s latest deal adds to its list of venture backers, with another top name on the cap table. Andreessen Horowitz, Bitkraft Ventures, Google, Riot Games, and rapper Nas have so far backed the company with $60 million of funding to date. 

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Meta extends ban on new political ads past Election Day

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Meta extends ban on new political ads past Election Day

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg plans to visit South Korea, scheduling key meetings during the trip, according to a statement by Meta on Wednesday, which did not provide further details. Reportedly, Zuckerberg is anticipated to meet with Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee later this month to discuss AI chip supply and other generative AI issues, as per the South Korean newspaper Seoul Economic Daily, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Meta extended its ban on new political ads on Facebook and Instagram past Election Day in the U.S.

The social media giant announced the political ads policy update on Monday, extending its ban on new political ads past Tuesday, the original end date for the restriction period.

Meta did not specify the day it will lift the restriction, saying only that the ad blocking will continue “until later this week.” The company did not say why it extended the political advertising restriction period.

The company announced in August that any political ads that ran at least once before Oct. 29 would still be allowed to run on Meta’s services in the final week before Election Day. Other political ads will not be allowed to run.

Organization with eligible ads will have “limited editing capabilities” while the restriction is still in place, Meta said. Those advertisers will be allowed to make scheduling, budgeting and bidding-related changes to their political ads, Meta said.

Meta enacted the same policy in 2020. The company said the policy is in place because “we recognize there may not be enough time to contest new claims made in ads.”

Google-parent Alphabet announced a similar ad policy update last month, saying it would pause ads relating to U.S. elections from running in the U.S. after the last polls close on Tuesday. Alphabet said it would notify advertisers when it lifts the pause.

Nearly $1 billion has been spent on political ads over the last week, with the bulk of the money spent on down-ballot races throughout the U.S., according to data from advertising analytics firm AdImpact.

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Tech still investing big in AI development despite few breakout products

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Jeff Bezos and OpenAI invest in robot startup Physical Intelligence at $2.4 billion valuation

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Jeff Bezos and OpenAI invest in robot startup Physical Intelligence at .4 billion valuation

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2024 (L), and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 2, 2021.

Reuters

Physical Intelligence, a robot startup based in San Francisco, has raised $400 million at a $2.4 billion post-money valuation, the company confirmed Monday to CNBC.

Investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive Capital and Lux Capital, a Physical Intelligence spokesperson said. Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital are also listed as investors on the company’s website.

Physical Intelligence’s new valuation is about six times that of its March seed round, which reportedly came in at $70 million with a $400 million valuation. Its current roster of employees includes alumni of Tesla, Google DeepMind and X.

The startup focuses on “bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world,” per its website, and it aims to do this by developing large-scale artificial intelligence models and algorithms to power robots. The startup spent the past eight months developing a “general-purpose” AI model for robots, the company wrote in a blog post. Physical Intelligence hopes that model will be the first step toward its ultimate goal of developing artificial general intelligence. AGI is a term used to describe AI technology that equals or surpasses human intellect on a wide range of tasks.

The news comes days after OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, its viral chatbot, that positions the AI startup to better compete with search engines like GoogleMicrosoft‘s Bing and Perplexity. Last month, OpenAI also closed its latest funding round at a valuation of $157 billion.

Physical Intelligence’s vision is that one day users can “simply ask robots to perform any task they want, just like they can ask large language models (LLMs) and chatbot assistants,” the startup wrote in the blog post. In case studies, Physical Intelligence details how its tech could allow a robot to do laundry, bus tables or assemble a box.

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Barry Diller calls timing of The Washington Post’s non-endorsement a ‘blunder’

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Barry Diller calls timing of The Washington Post's non-endorsement a 'blunder'

Watch CNBC's full interview with IAC and Expedia chairman Barry Diller

To Barry Diller, a friend of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the decision for The Washington Post not to endorse a candidate in tomorrow’s presidential election was “absolutely principled” — and poorly timed, he said Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

“They made a blunder — it should’ve happened months before, and it didn’t, and that’s the issue with it,” Diller said.

Diller is chairperson of both online travel company Expedia and IAC, which owns media platforms and websites like Dotdash Meredith and Care.com. He and Bezos appear to have been close friends for years, with Diller and his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, hosting Bezos’s engagement party to fiancee Lauren Sanchez.

The decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 race or for future presidential races came directly from Bezos, the paper’s owner, according to an article published by two of the Post’s own reporters.

The move prompted public condemnation from several staff writers, a flood of at least 250,000 digital subscription cancellations and the resignations of at least three editorial board members.

Bezos defended his position in his own op-ed late last month, calling the move a “meaningful step in the right direction” to restore low public trust in media and journalism.

“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos wrote, emphasizing that the decision to not endorse a candidate was made “entirely internally” and without consulting either campaign. “I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it.”

Diller said he spoke to Bezos following the decision.

“I think it was absolutely principled,” Diller said. “The mistake they made — and it was a mistake admitted by him — was timing.”

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