Yakuza creator's new studio and its debut game Gang of Dragon are no more after losing funding from NetEase

eurogamer.net Nov 2, 2026

Yakuza creator’s new studio and its debut game Gang of Dragon are no more after losing funding from NetEase

Curated by Shubham · TechCapsules · Nov 2, 2026

AI-summarised brief · reviewed before publication

Tokyo‑based Nagoshi Studio announced its closure this week, confirming that its debut title, Gang of Dragon, will not be released. The studio, founded by Yakuza series creator Toshihiro Nagoshi in 2021, had unveiled a crime‑drama trailer at The Game Awards 2025 featuring actor Ma Dong‑seok. Months earlier, publisher NetEase withdrew a required £33.1 million (≈$44.4 million) investment, leaving the project unfunded. The funding cut reflects NetEase’s broader retreat from overseas game investments, a trend that has also forced studios such as Ouka and Jerry Hook’s team to pause operations. Nagoshi’s shutdown was recorded in the Japanese government gazette Kanpō, marking the end of his first independent venture. Industry observers note the loss removes a fresh take on the crime‑action genre from the market.

💡 Why It Matters

· The collapse underscores how reliance on a single overseas backer can derail even veteran creators, tightening the pipeline for high‑profile Japanese IPs.

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Tutor Intelligence raises Series B to scale model training, robot deployments

Tutor Intelligence Inc., a spin‑out of MIT CSAIL, announced a $75 million Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing its total funding to $117 million. The capital will accelerate training of its frontier robot foundation models and expand manufacturing of its two‑armed “Sonny” and mobile “Cassie” robots. Tutor’s full‑stack platform uses a “data flywheel” that captures real‑world manipulation data from fleets of internet‑connected robots operated remotely by human “tutors,” feeding the data back into AI models to improve capability, safety and cost. The company now has twice as many robots operating in nearly four times as many facilities as a year ago and aims to contract over 1,000 robots by 2027, all built and deployed in the United States. Customers pay by the hour or per pick, avoiding upfront purchases or long‑term contracts, while Tutor handles deployment, maintenance and software upgrades.

💡 By turning deployment data into a continuous learning loop, Tutor is shifting robotics from niche, pre‑programmed tasks to a scalable, general‑purpose workforce that can be rented like labor, opening automation to a far broader range of businesses.

thequantuminsider.com · Nov 2

Scottish Widows Targets Quantum Computing With UK Venture Growth Investments

Scottish Widows, the UK workplace‑pension provider owned by Lloyds Banking Group, is channeling members’ savings into a venture‑growth portfolio managed by IP Group. The first allocations will target Oxford Quantum Circuits and Quantum Motion, two quantum‑computing start‑ups, alongside battery firm Nyobolt and AI‑driven health‑tech company Genomics Limited. Aberdeen Investments appointed IP Group to run the portfolio within the CG Scottish Widows Growth long‑term asset fund, aiming to supply “follow‑on” capital for British firms ready to commercialise technology and scale. The move seeks to improve retirement outcomes while addressing a financing gap that the provider says hampers the UK’s innovation economy. The default pension options will automatically expose members to the private‑markets sub‑fund, with exposure ranging from 11% to 23%.

💡 By linking pension cash to high‑growth tech, Scottish Widows creates a domestic source of patient capital that could accelerate the UK’s transition from lab breakthroughs to market‑ready products.

techcrunch.com · Nov 1

OpenAI reportedly lowers funding target for new round

OpenAI’s newest fundraising round has been trimmed from an earlier $30 billion target to $20 billion, according to the Financial Times. The round, led by investors from the United Arab Emirates, is expected to close at a figure lower than the revised target, with a retail tranche for high‑net‑worth individuals potentially filling the gap. The Wall Street Journal reports the company has secured $11 billion so far and encountered a “tepid” response from several large investors. Analysts link the softer demand to broader market caution over heavy AI infrastructure spending, which has depressed tech‑stock valuations. The funding shortfall arrives as OpenAI prepares for a planned IPO, while rival Anthropic also faces IPO hurdles.

💡 The reduced capital raise signals waning investor appetite for large‑scale AI bets amid a market pullback, tightening the financial runway for OpenAI’s expansion and IPO ambitions.

therobotreport.com · Oct 31

Humanoid developer Agility now expects to raise $465M in SPAC deal

Agility Robotics and Churchill Capital Corp XI announced that the planned SPAC merger will raise about $465 million, down from the $620 million previously projected at a $2.5 billion valuation. The capital package includes roughly $164 million from Churchill’s trust, a $201 million common‑stock PIPE at $10 per share led by Foxconn, and $100 million of equity already secured. The transaction is slated to close on Nov. 4, pending shareholder approval. Agility, which unveiled the Digit 5 humanoid with redesigned legs, optional wheels and fast‑charging batteries from Nyobolt, expects to begin early‑access deliveries in early 2027 and full availability by year‑end. The company reports $1.8 million in 2025 net sales and over $300 million in multi‑year orders from customers such as Toyota, Mercado Libre and Schaeffler.

💡 The funding positions Agility as the first pure‑play U.S. humanoid supplier to go public, giving it the runway to scale commercial deployments and meet growing enterprise demand.

thequantuminsider.com · Oct 31

Quantum Industry Coalition Highlights Funding Priorities For The National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization…

The Quantum Industry Coalition (QIC) sent a letter to Senate and House science committees urging passage of the National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act (NQIRA) as part of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act. The coalition, whose members include Amazon Web Services, IBM, Microsoft and IonQ, asked lawmakers to raise funding authorizations, support quantum testbeds and technology centers, sustain grants for quantum hardware and software, and expand workforce programs. It also called for aligning research‑security rules and program definitions with the CHIPS and Science Act, covering quantum‑classical hybrid systems. QIC stresses that U.S. leadership in quantum technology is slipping as rivals such as China accelerate investments, and that NDAA offers the fastest route to reauthorize the initiative, which lapsed in September 2023.

💡 Without renewed funding, the United States risks ceding quantum supremacy to China, and the NDAA’s inclusion of NQIRA is the only immediate legislative path to preserve the nation’s competitive edge.

nextplatform.com · Oct 31

AI Arms Race Puts Sovereign Supply Chains in the Spotlight

South Korea is intensifying its push for a sovereign AI hardware ecosystem, leveraging domestic memory giants SK Hynix and Samsung and nearby fabs such as TSMC and Rapidus. Two home‑grown startups, Rebellions and FuriosaAI, have already shipped silicon—Rebellions’ Rebel100 matches Nvidia’s three‑year‑old H200, while Furiosa’s RNGD delivers 2.25 × the performance‑per‑watt of an older A100. This week Furiosa announced a $620 million Series D round to scale RNGD production to about 20,000 units this year and double output by 2027, with Samsung and LG as key customers. The next‑gen accelerator will be fabricated on a 2 nm process, use a multi‑die chiplet design, and incorporate HBM4/4e, developed alongside Broadcom’s advanced packaging technology. The effort reflects broader geopolitical concerns about reliance on U.S. GPU supply and mirrors similar sovereign AI drives in Japan and Europe.

💡 Securing a domestically produced AI accelerator shields South Korea from abrupt export bans and positions it as a strategic hardware hub in a tightening global tech rivalry.