Wild berries enter the Chinese market, OpenAI bought the first company: the main thing on August 17

Russia

• The court again fined Yandex CEO Artem Savinsky 200 thousand rubles for incorrectly marking the age of films on Kinopoisk. On this occasion, the ’18+’ dies without the tapes ‘Little Italy’, ‘Love, Love, Love’, ‘Alexander’ and ‘Doctor T and His Women’. The paintings show LGBT scenes.

Finance

• In January-June, advertising expenses of microfinance companies increased 1.5 times, to 10 billion rubles, Kommersant learned.
• 52% of Russians receive monthly passive income in the amount of 5 thousand and more. Basically, it is a bank deposit, a monthly repayment on a card or investments in securities.
• In the first half of the year, the largest Russian brokers showed a steady increase in profits, which exceeded 22 billion rubles. A year earlier, many of them posted losses, writes Kommersant.

• VK announced its intention to issue replacement bonds. The parameters and terms of the issue are not disclosed, the company will inform investors after registration of documents with the Central Bank. Earlier, the holding company announced its delisting from the London Stock Exchange and its “move” from the British Virgin Islands to the Kaliningrad region.

• Russian “Tsifra Broker” Launches ITS DeFi Crypto Platform in Belarus. The investment company invested 109 million rubles in the site operator. Earlier, the media wrote that such a project could be implemented in cooperation with the St. Petersburg Exchange.

Business

• OpenAI has acquired open source digital product development startup Global Illumination.
• Wildberries has planned to enter the Chinese market. The company has registered its trademark in the country in the 45 classes of the Nice Classification.

Services and technologies

• A private club for public organizers has appeared on VKontakte – the Community Accelerator. Access to it is by invitation. The accelerator offers marathons, networking sessions and webinars, group calls, and random coffee for organizers.

• Sber introduced its GigaChat neural network to devices with the Salyut assistant. Owners of SberBoom and SberBoom Mini smart speakers will be the first to test the operation of the neural network; for this, it is enough to say: “Hello, turn on GigaChat.” Now the wizard will be able to compose a fairy tale on request, suggest gift options, discuss an idea, present a congratulation or make a training plan. The neural network remembers the context of the conversation, this allows it to add details and clarifications to the dialogue.

• The Startech.Base platform has added the function of distributing project cards. Startups can now generate a custom link with information about their product and share the project card with potential investors and clients.

Transport

• Airlines flying to or from Russia may have difficulties arranging flights due to the disconnection of the channels of the Swiss company Societe Internationale de Telecommunication Aeronautiqes (SITA), writes RBC.