copies

DeepSeek wants to raise its first round of financing and copies the last thing that remained to be copied from the US: the economic model

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Chinese AI startups appear to have surrendered to Silicon Valley capitalism. Both DeepSeek such as Moonshot AI (Kimi) have begun to raise investment rounds or are preparing to do so. It is a turning point in a race that is now becoming especially interesting and that also raises a clear question: will these companies continue betting on open models? The valuation is multiplied by two. DeepSeek had always avoided making that decision and it seemed almost a personal project of its founder, billionaire Liang Wenfeng. However, the company is now in talks to raise its first round of external investment, they assure in Financial Times. According to company data, Wenfeng has 89.5% of the stake in the company. There is talk of a round that would increase DeepSeek’s valuation from the current $20 billion to around $45 billion. Who is the “Big Fund”. Behind this investment round is above all the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, also known as the “Big Fund”. This consortium, the most important of its segment in the field of semiconductors, is supported by the Chinese state, and has a “cash” of 47 billion dollars contributed by the Chinese Ministry of Economy, the local government and several state banks thanks to a third round that was carried out in 2024. At the moment the “Big Fund” has not invested in other Chinese AI startups, but it has in companies like SMIC or Yangtze. The war for talent. The reason behind this decision is not only the need for capital to have access to more computing capacity. According to sources close to the operation, Liang Wenfeng has been forced to open that option to stop talent theft and thus be able to keep their best researchers on the payroll. In a market as competitive as this one, DeepSeek needs to offer shares to its employees to compete with the aggressive recruitment of talent by its local and Western rivals. A promising pairing. The relevance of this investment goes beyond the AI ​​model as such. DeepSeek has been significantly optimized for be able to run on Huawei hardwareallowing China to have a platform that works without the need for Nvidia chips. This symbiosis between this efficient AI model and the Chinese hardware giant is quite a bet by the Chinese government to try to win this race despite Washington’s blockades. The forced bet on “national” chips. Seeking that support in Huawei chips is not only a technical choice, but a political necessity for survive NVIDIA GPU crash. The problem is that Chinese hardware is still struggling to close the raw performance gap against architectures like Blackwell’s. If DeepSeek’s software hits a ceiling and chips created in China do not evolve at the necessary pace, the laboratory could find itself trapped: it would not matter to be very efficient when they cannot compete in raw power. Moonshot signs up for the rounds. DeepSeek is not alone in this race to achieve huge valuations. Moonshot AI just got up 2 billion dollars from investors such as Meituan, raising its value above 20 billion. Meanwhile, other rivals such as MiniMax and Zhipu AI (GLM) already surpass the 30,000 million valuation in their stock market debuts. This trend is therefore following what was already experienced (and continues to be experienced) in the US with AI startups, and the capital bubble that exists in the North American country now seems to have its eastern version in China. Moonshot AI and exceeds $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). The paradox of copying the economic model. It’s ironic that DeepSeek, which became famous for challenging the “brute force” of American spending, ends up adopting its same funding structure. The company has shown that efficiency could offer an alternative to those almost unlimited resources of venture capital accessed by OpenAI or Anthropic. However, market reality dictates that a very solid capital structure is still what is needed to survive in the long term. Either you have it, or you can’t continue training models, reserving computing capacity and, of course, retaining talent. Open models? Until now DeepSeek had been one of the heroes of open weight AI models. Thanks to this, platforms like Hugging Face allow you to download it and allow everyone to take advantage of its achievements in terms of efficiency. The entry of venture capital and state funds could change the rules of the game: investors do not usually inject billions of dollars so that the product ends up being “given away” even for its competitors. The company will probably face the dilemma of closing its next models to protect its valuation and generate exclusive income, or keep its philosophy open at the risk that its investors no longer trust that strategy. In Xataka | If at some point NVIDIA has to choose between giving its best chips to the US or China, its choice is very clear.

The ambitious adaptation of a literary classic with 70 million copies sold comes to Prime Video

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In 1993, Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons and Antonio Banderas starred in the first adaptation of ‘The spirit house‘but Isabel Allende’s novel did not turn out very well, because the film left its Latin identity behind. Thirty-three years later, Prime Video premieres the first television adaptation in Spanish of the work, filmed entirely in Chile, with an Ibero-American creative team and Allende herself acting as executive producer. Published in 1982, the novel has sold more than 70 million copies worldwide and is considered a classic of 20th century Latin American literature. The Amazon adaptation was conceived by Francisca Alegría and Fernanda Urrejola, who co-wrote the pilot, who were later joined by Andrés Wood, director of ‘Machuca’ and the series ‘News of a Kidnapping’, who directed four of the eight episodes and served as co-showrunner. Isabel Allende herself and Eva Longoria are on the list of executive producers, in a proposal where Wood recognizes a very extensive female presence. The series follows the Trueba family through several decades of the 20th century in an unnamed South American country (although it is unmistakably Chile) undergoing profound political and social upheavals. At the center is Esteban, an ambitious, authoritarian and violent patriarch who builds his fortune by subjugating the peasants who work on his hacienda, Las Tres Marías. In front of him, Clara del Valle, a woman with supernatural gifts, who is gifted with clairvoyance and communicates with spirits, and whose sensitivity contrasts with the brutality of Esteban, whom she ends up marrying. The story unfolds through three generations of women, each facing power in their own way. The series is part of Prime Video’s commitment to Latin American content: according to data from Parrot Analyticsstreaming originals in Spanish and Portuguese grew 266% between 2020 and 2024, outpacing the growth rate of content in any other language. For this series, the platform is betting on a staggered premiere, with three first episodes available from this Wednesday, April 29, two new ones on May 6 and the three on May 13. It is a formula that Prime Video has used with other productions to keep the conversation active for several weeks, unlike the Netflix model. In Xataka | A porn video club in Valladolid in 1998: Prime Video gets naked with ‘Cochinas’

The return of BTS turns K-pop into macroeconomics thanks to 4 million copies and a 2 billion tour

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After four years of group silencethe return of the undisputed kings of K-pop, BTS, is going beyond the mere cultural event: 3.98 million copies of her new album sold on the first day and the announcement of an 82-concert tour whose projected revenue rivals Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. BTS is already more than one of the most important pop groups in the world. It is an event of almost microeconomic magnitude. The farewell BTS’s last joint concert was in March 2022. A few months later, the group announced a pause for its seven members to complete mandatory military service in South Korea, a commitment of between 18 and 21 months from which not even they were exempt. The last to graduate was Jin, in June 2025. In between, each member launched solo projects with mixed success while HYBE, the company that owns the group, endured the pressure of not having its main asset working. Strangled without BTS, but not much. Because of this forced absenceHYBE’s operating profit fell 73% in 2025up to 49.9 billion won and while restructuring its operations in the United States and investing in new business lines. Its fan platform Weverse, however, managed to enter its first year of profit, with 11.2 million monthly active users generating stable income through memberships and expenses linked to digital commerce. The search for ‘Arirang’. This past weekend, BTS released ‘Arirang’, their fifth studio album. The title is loaded with meaning: it refers to a Korean folk song considered the country’s unofficial anthem, with centuries of history and dozens of regional variants. A clear manifesto, as they have said in various interviewsabout the group members’ common Korean identity. They produced more than 120 songs for this album in two months, of which 14 survived, all deliberately brief to please generation Z and its more than recognized difficulty concentrating your attention at a point beyond a few minutes. The sales. ‘Arirang’ sold 3.98 million physical copies in its first 24 hourssurpassing the record that the group itself had with ‘Map of the Soul: 7’. On Spotify, the platform recorded 110 million global plays on Spotify in its first 24 hours, and was positioned among the most pre-saves in the history of the service, with more than 5 million prey. The album’s 14 songs simultaneously occupied Spotify’s global top spot, while the single ‘Swim’ debuted at number one with more than 14.6 million views. The absolute historical record for the platform is still held by Taylor Swift with ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ and 314 million listens. Concert in Seoul. The day after the release, on March 21, BTS held a free concert in Seoul’s massive Gwanghwamun Square. Around 260,000 people traveled to the venue: 22,000 fans were in front of the stage and tens of thousands more followed the show on giant screens installed in the surrounding area. Municipal authorities and HYBE 8,200 people were deployed between police, medical staff and management teams. The concert was, furthermore, broadcast live on Netflix: It was the platform’s first global live broadcast of a music concert, and could be enjoyed in 190 countries. The tour is the key. The tour is where the economic magnitude of the return is concentrated. The ARIRANG World Tour will begin on April 9 in Goyang (South Korea) and will end about 11 months later in Manila, with 82 concerts in 34 cities in 23 countries. The tour includes Europe (Belgium, United Kingdom, Germany and France), North America, Latin America (Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Brazil), Southeast Asia and Australia. How will it be? Apparently, BTS will use a 360 degree scenario instead of the usual front format. This will eliminate restricted visibility areas that normally render between 15% and 30% of the seats unusable: a 70,000-seat stadium in frontal format sells approximately 55,000 usable tickets; with the round design it can reach 65,000. The analysts They project total income from the tour of up to $1.8 billion, figures that would place the tour in the same league as Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour. For comparison: that of Taylor Swift It generated nearly $2.07 billion with 149 concerts. BTS could approach that figure with half the number of concerts. The stock market hype. Following the announcement of BTS’ comeback, HYBE shares reached their highest in the last four years, rising up to 9.5% and adding more than one trillion South Korean won to the company’s market capitalization. It is expected HYBE’s revenue in 2026 is expected to grow by 47% to 3.87 trillion won, with an operating profit of approximately 480 billion won: ten times that of 2025. Impact on tourism. According to data from the South Korean Ministry of Justice, foreign visitor arrivals between March 1 and 18 grew by 32.7% compared to the previous year, driven especially by tourists between 20 and 29 years old. Europe was the market with the highest relative growth, with an increase of 51%. The Korea Culture and Tourism Institute esteem that the tour will generate 1.2 trillion won of impact per concert held in South Korea. Some economists are modeling the entire return as a macroeconomic event in itself, with projections pointing to a contribution of up to 0.5% of GDP when tourism, hospitality, retail and country brand growth are added. What has changed. Four years later, BTS returns to a different market than the one they left: the short-form video (Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok) is no longer an accessory promotional tool, but the very core of what needs to be covered with any launch. Artificial intelligence has been installed in music production (in the interview with Bloomberg, Suga compares it to the Industrial Revolution and speaks of “irreversible” changes). It has also changed how we see live musicincreasingly in need of spectacularity. And, of course, how the international perception of K-pop has changed after the success of ‘The K-pop Warriors’ from Netflix. A world in perpetual change to which, for the moment, BTS does … Read more

MrBeast makes a video and everyone copies him

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Content on YouTube and other video networks is becoming more and more like fast food: clone flavors, different packaging (although with few differences). MrBeast It is currently the global reference on the platform and has sparked a race to replicate its challenge-show-prize format, flooding other people’s profiles (both North American creators and Spanish streamers) with content with very few differences between them. What we have lost along the way: the personality that turned YouTube into an alternative to traditional television. What are these videos about? A hook in the first ten seconds, absolutely obscene amounts of money at stake (figures like $250,000 in weekly challenges), many people screaming a lotan editing rhythm that doesn’t let you breathe. This is how Jimmy Donaldson’s channel, better known as MrBeast, works, and this is how those of hundreds of creators work who, to a greater or lesser extent, have copied his visual grammar, which ranges from the speed of editing to the video thumbnails themselves. In Spain, Its most relevant copier is Ibai Llanos. But is everything as the same as it seems? According to some studies, yes. This 2024 analysis discussed how YouTube’s recommendation system tends to reduce the diversity of content that reaches the viewer, favoring what researchers call “densely interconnected content communities.” The mechanism is circular: the algorithm rewards what already works, the creators replicate what the algorithm favors, the viewer sees more of the same. Whether it is all part of a plan or something that has simply evolved in that direction is a dilemma that remains subject to discussion. The practical result is a platform where the average video thumbnail includes a face with an open mouth, a large red number, and some high-value object. Youtube Product Manager has recognized that the algorithm drives 70% of all views on the platform, meaning that more than the creators themselves, it is the system that decides what thrives and what doesn’t. And YouTubers have to study it and embrace it if they want to upload. of visits. The first times. For years, around the middle of the last decade, YouTube was a platform that encouraged experimentation: the first big channels, like PewDiePie or the Vlogbrothers, and in Spain people like the foundational AuronPlay, ElRubius or Wismichu, to name just a few, made spontaneity a format and built their video empires on their own personalities. Long, sometimes chaotic videos, where the audience’s loyalty did not come from the spectacle but from the identification with whoever was speaking to the camera. It was parasocial content in the most literal sense: the hook was to sit down and watch someone, week after week, and feel like you knew them. How he triumphed. MrBeast spent, by his own account, between 20,000 and 30,000 hours studying YouTube before building the most viewed channel on the platform. In 2023, a 36-page internal document titled “How to Succeed in MrBeast Production” (or ‘How to Succeed at MrBeast Production’, an onboarding manual for new employees) was leaked online. Its content was revealing: the content of the videos formulated as engineering to retain the viewer with precise metrics, tested formats and detailed analysis of important elements of the videos, such as the so-called “wow factor”, and the suggestion of never reusing the same format twice in a row so as not to fatigue the audience. The triumph. This industrial production manual applied to entertainment worked like a charm: the youtuber brought in 54 million dollars in 2022 alone and surpassed 300 million subscribers in 2024, becoming the first individual channel to reach that number on YouTube. MrBeast himself knows perfectly well that he makes a very imitated model. On the topic declared: “many people copy me every day, but it would be hypocritical to get angry with them”, referring to the fact that his fortune comes from studying previous content that worked. Nobody is blameless. Among his most notable copiers are A4 (Vlad Bumaga), Brent Rivera, Yolo, Morgz. It is copied. In 2023 Ibai Llanos issued the second edition of ‘The Last One Standing’: Ten streamers locked in a square, the one who lasts the longest wins 50,000 euros (in the first edition it was 30,000). Ibai himself made it clear that the format was based directly on MrBeast videos (“it’s great in the United States”). He did it in his own style, of course: he not only published a summary of the event, but it was broadcast live in an eight-hour stream. The relationship between the Spanish-speaking ecosystem and MrBeast had another interesting crossover. In July 2024, Ibai, Rubius, Spreen and Quackity participated in a video by the North American creator with fifty content creators from around the world. The video has more than 447 million viewsalthough the Spanish streamers appeared for just a few seconds. Ibai acknowledged that “Compared to North American YouTubers and streamers, we are insignificant”, That has not prevented the formula from continuing to be replicated on a local scale. The productive infrastructure of Ibai (Kings League, The Evening of the Yearthe Ibainéficos) responds to a similar logic: the event-show as a unit of content and money as a narrative engine. In the case of Ibai, the truth is that the Spanish creator strives to maintain his personality, although most of his formats and approaches would not exist without the precedent of MrBeast. Where are we going? MrBeast seems to sense that the formula has a limit, and there are signs that he is aware of the exhaustion that his own formula generates. In September 2025, the YouTuber himself described one of his most recent videos as “less screaming, slower, more story, more emotion,” and the video surpassed 83 million views in four days. The spectacle continued to predominate (two ex-boyfriends had to remain chained to win a large amount of money), but the feelings and drama were just as high as the substantial prizes. New tiger costume or the same old striped pajamas? In Xataka | Chichén Itzá and the Mayan ruins … Read more

A grandmother left a game of Game Boy and 26 copies of the same game

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As lover of retro video games, something that I love is when I go to a family home and find a old console or video game of my childhood. It is a special moment and, irremediably, I feel invaded by a feeling of nostalgia. I know I’m not alone in this, but I am clear about one thing: it is complicated that I find a treasure like 20 Game boy that a grandmother kept at home. It is what happened to a user of Reddit A few years ago and, of course, such a fact aroused the imagination to explain the reason for such a hidden treasure. And the one that seems more plausible is incredibly tender. The material. Everything happened when this person went to his grandmother’s house and the cake was found: 20 Game Boy Advance Sp (one is the Edgy Mario Tribal Edition), the best version of the Game Boy Color (the transparent abode), 26 copies of ‘Wario Land 4’ and 14 of ‘Super Mario Ball’, as well as the occasional game of Game Boy (‘Zelda Oracle of Ages’, Gamezo) and Game Boy Advance and an adapter with magnifying glass for a game boy advance that does not appear in the image. The Treasury Speculation. In Reddit there are doubts about whether this was a real finding or just a way of winning ‘karma’ – the score that gives relevance in the network – by the user, but taking into account the numerous copies and consoles, it was also a good thread in which speculation about reasons woke up The imagination. The reasons why grandma had all this material can be several: I didn’t know how to load the console And, when the battery stopped working, he simply bought a new one. In the case of the Game Boy Advance Sp, you have to remember that I was not going to batteries, but with drums. It would be strange, but hey, it can happen. I didn’t know how to start a new game Or I didn’t want and, every time I wanted to play a game again, I bought another copy. Ok, good, but don’t explain the 20 Game Boy. He was wrong when buying online the articles and did not know how to return them. This is more crazy because … wouldn’t I ask for help? Legacy. Then, there is the Reddit user’s answer. He also speculates, since he does not know for sure, but it is something that makes enough sense (and that, sincerely, if I reach a certain age with grandchildren I would also consider doing). In the thread, he commented that he had no idea of ​​the reason after this, but that “he also left some tutorials that he printed on websites, as well as some messages for his grandchildren, explaining characteristics of the games. I love her very much and find this was a bittersweet moment. ” That may be the simplest explanation. Simply, they loved those videogames in particular and wanted to buy the more, the better for them to enjoy them in their family. A quite beautiful legacy. Grandparents Jugones. Although in the future the stories with older people enjoying video games They will cease to be a reason for conversation due to how normalized it will be, occasionally, tender news of this style continues. A few years ago, the Internet was fascinated with Shirley Curri, La ‘grandmother of ‘Skyrim‘, which, at almost 90 years old, went up content of the Bethesda game to YouTube. Also stories such as older people training For electronic sports tournaments, the 65 -year -old who had 15 years playing ‘Call of Duty World At War’ either The ‘grandfather of’ Pokémon Go‘I played with 45 phones at the same time. Image | Reddit In Xataka | Game boy: “The brick” that fought to become a phenomenon

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