In July, Microsoft announced it had started the Bing Fund, an angel investment effort that would offer start up companies cash as well as access to software and hardware from Bing and other parts of Microsoft Research. Today, the company announced it has picked the first two companies that it is supporting through the Bing Fund.
According to the Bing blog, one of the companies that will benefit from the Bing Fund is Buddy Platform, Inc. The blog states:
The Buddy Platform considerably reduces the amount of time mobile and web application developers spend writing, testing, and managing server-side code. Its cross-platform APIs support common scenarios such as user accounts, friends and group lists, messaging and chat, geo-location services, photo albums, metadata, gaming, push notifications and crash reporting.
The other company that will receive the first benefits from the Bing Fund is Pinion Tech. This company offers in-game advertising that are seen by gamers on PC multiplayer servers. Rahul Sood, the head of the Bing Fund states on his blog:
Pinion is doing some great work with Valve and their Steam platform. I have been a Steam user since, like, forever. I have been playing Counter-Strike and Half-Life since they first came out -- so I spent a good amount of time studying how Pinion community servers work. Pinion is actually working on ways to improve the gaming experience, for example by offering up free gaming servers to communities.
Microsoft did not reveal how much it has invested in Buddy or in Pinion. Sood's blog states that the Bing Fund team is still going through a number of submissions and hinted at more company announcements to come.
Source: Bing blog
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