Unexpectedly, after Apple CEO Cook came to Shanghai during his trip to China, he made a special trip to MiHoYo headquarters and posted a special Weibo post.
Why miHoYo? Perhaps Cook is also curious about this "financier father". According to statistics, MiHoYo will generate global revenue of approximately RMB 10 billion on the two major terminals of Apple and iPad in 2022. If calculated based on Apple’s 30% share, MiHoYo will bring about 3 billion yuan in revenue to Apple in 2022 alone.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. With games such as "Honkai Impact 3" and "Genshin Impact", miHoYo has swept overseas players and earned foreign exchange, becoming a key national cultural export enterprise. According to the conclusion reached by "Second Dimension Mobile Game Observation", the owner of Bilibili UP, after integrating domestic and foreign data: In 2022, MiHoYo's revenue will reach a terrifying 42.5 billion yuan from just one game "Genshin Impact".
When startups are still worrying about how to make money, MiHoYo may be worrying about how to spend the money they have. "Have you heard of it? A game company in Shanghai has 5 billion in cash and is looking for financial managers all over the world." This rumor has been circulating in the VC circle since last year.
In the end, MiHoYo gave the answer – to be a VC and invest in the future it believes in. Since last year, MiHoYo has appeared intensively in the VC circle, investing in a number of projects that have nothing to do with games, such as brain-computer interfaces, aerospace rockets and even artificial suns. Recently, MiHoYo is planning to launch AI again, and seems to be looking for a Chinese version.
01
MiHoYo that VC collectively missed
Start a VC
MiHoYo’s latest investment unexpectedly appeared in the field of AI. During this time, there were rumors that miHoYo was preparing to participate in a new round of investment in domestic AI startups. Prior to this, miHoYo had participated in the first two rounds of investment.
Information shows that it is an artificial intelligence company established by Yan Junjie, the former vice president of SenseTime Technology and head of general intelligent technology. Starting from the bottom, it has formed a basic model architecture of three major modalities: text to vision, text to speech, and text to text. It may be the first domestic startup company to have large model capabilities in three modalities at the same time.
It is worth mentioning that the business model is similar to that of , including two major directions: to C and to B. In the to C direction, its first AI virtual chat social software Glow has accumulated millions of users within four months of its launch; in the to B direction, it plans to open its API to the outside world this year. It is reported that the current valuation may have reached US$1 billion, and existing investors also include first-tier institutions such as Hillhouse Venture Capital and Mingshi Capital.
Using the money earned from the game to find a Chinese version is in line with MiHoYo's style. According to incomplete statistics, MiHoYo has made at least dozens of investments and invested in more than 20 companies. Judging from specific projects, MiHoYo’s investment landscape ranges from the dubbing team of “Honkai Impact 3” and the cloud game service provider of “Genshin Impact” to game engines, derivatives development and brain-computer interfaces, and even aviation rockets and artificial suns. , seems willful but also has its own set of logic.
Among them, MiHoYo has invested in four companies including Xindong Network, Mystery Home, Magic Sword Network, and Apeji around the game products themselves. The products are mainly mobile games. The more well-known is Xindong Network, which has both research and development and distribution capabilities. It has many popular products and head channel communities such as "Sausage Party", "Peeping Dreams in the Cage", "Land of Evil" and other popular products.
What is sensational is that in August 2022, miHoYo, together with Alibaba, China Mobile, Gigabyte, OPPO, Jiadu Technology and Douyin Group, participated in the angel round investment of the game engine provider Unity China. The post-investment valuation to US$1 billion.
In addition to games, miHoYo is also particularly interested in cutting-edge technology. For example, miHoYo has made a rare investment in the Encephalopathy Center of Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The main content of the cooperation is the development and clinical application of brain-computer interface technology, with miHoYo providing special funds. The two parties jointly established the "Ruijin Encephalopathy Center MiHoYo Joint Laboratory".
In the VC circle, MiHoYo has the courage of a newborn calf who is not afraid of tigers, making bold and casual moves. For example, MiHoYo has rarely invested in two companies that have nothing to do with games – private rocket technology company Oriental Space and commercial fusion energy technology company Energy Singularity.
These two moves may seem bizarre, but the two invested companies have similarities: the founder of Oriental Space is Yao Song, a Tsinghua academic who was born in 1992, and the founder and CEO of Energy Singularity graduated from Peking University in 2009. Yang Zhao from the Department of Physics, two young top academics, are both founders of cutting-edge technology companies.
These young founders are focused and "whimsical" and believe that technology can change the world. This temperament has some similarities with the people at the helm after MiHoYo.
02
Three post-85s from Shanghai Jiao Tong University
fury road
Looking back, the story of miHoYo begins with three "technical nerds".
At the beginning of 2011, Cai Haoyu, who was about to graduate from graduate school, recruited his roommates Liu Wei and Luo Yuhao, who also liked ACG (generally referring to two-dimensional animation, comics, and games), and officially established MiHoYo Studio in the D32 dormitory of the Minhang Campus of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. , their start-up capital was an interest-free loan of 100,000 yuan from the Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Center. Their entrepreneurial direction was two-dimensional games, and they also shouted a slogan: Technology nerds change the world.
In September of the same year, MiHoYo's first independently produced cute girl game "Fly Me 2 the Moon" was launched. The game was downloaded 3,000 times within a month, but it has always been tepid. It was in such a state that it did not bring in considerable cash flow. Soon, the 100,000 start-up capital was spent.
In order to support the survival of the studio, Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei and others began to seek financing everywhere. At that time, the second dimension was almost unreliable in the eyes of investors. In the video of Liu Wei's road show in his early years, we saw a young boy wearing an ill-fitting suit talking to investors about "otaku" and "two-dimensional" science, and laughter could be heard from time to time in the audience. For most VCs, investing in 2D mobile games is nonsense, let alone investing in 2D mobile games.
There were also investors who extended an olive branch, but there was one requirement: MiHoYo should give up two-dimensional games and switch to Three Kingdoms and martial arts games that can make quick money on the market, and make money immediately. However, several founders refused. Later Liu Wei recalled this: Although we really wanted to start a business, the premise was to do what we wanted to do.
Just when it was about to lose its support, MiHoYo got life-saving money – in 2012, it received a 1 million yuan angel round investment from Song Tao, CEO of Skye Network. This is MiHoYo's only financing so far.
After getting the money, the MiHoYo team is ready to go big. In October 2012, "Honkai Gakuin 1" broke into the two-dimensional game market with Kiana with a big forehead. This side-scrolling girl-shooting game that looks relatively simple now was considered a rare advancement in two-dimensional mobile games at the time, but its results were not ideal. Players were accustomed to free games, and for two-dimensional games that required krypton gold, The game is not cold.
The three of them fell into confusion again and held multiple jobs with a monthly salary of 4,000 yuan. At that time, Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei, and Luo Yuhao shared a 70-square-meter house with a rent of 3,900 yuan. I have eaten the vegetable rice bone soup, Lanzhou ramen, and Shaxian snacks downstairs for three years. Recalling those days, Liu Wei always smiles with relief at people: This is how we live in Shanghai.
But they did not give up, and began to get in close contact with players to understand their needs. With continuous improvement, the data of "Honkai Academy" began to recover. The turning point was around 2014, when the domestic two-dimensional market finally exploded, which can be said to be the year of the rise of the domestic animation industry. The following year, the movie "Journey to the West: The Return of the Great Sage" detonated the entire market. MiHoYo launched "Honkai Academy 2" while the game was hot. The revenue exceeded 10 million yuan a month after its launch, and the revenue for the year was 95 million yuan.
At the same time, a "little broken station" that also focuses on the second dimension like MiHoYo is rising – Bilibili. In sympathy with each other, miHoYo introduced Bilibili to represent "Honkai Academy 2". The cooperation between the two was the first success of the two-dimensional mobile game, which quickly exploded in the ACG circle, with annual revenue exceeding 100 million. Since then, Honkai Impact 3 has successfully broken through the circle. After 9 months of public beta, the cumulative sales amount exceeded 1.1 billion yuan.
Everyone knows the story behind it. On September 28, 2020, an open world adventure game "Genshin Impact" that MiHoYo had been planning for three years was released. The game is available in 15 languages and is simultaneously released in more than 150 countries/regions around the world.
With its exquisite and beautiful scenes and the unlimited creativity of the open world, "Genshin Impact" has become popular at home and abroad, making a lot of money, especially overseas. According to the monitoring of Diandian Data, in the two years from 2021 to 2022, the overseas revenue of "Genshin Impact" is estimated to exceed 2 billion US dollars, and the overseas App Store and Play downloads are estimated to exceed 80 million times, accounting for more than 50% of its total revenue. .
"Genshin Impact" has become the most successful two-dimensional game overseas in China in recent years, and has also become MiHoYo's "money printing machine". In July 2021, the Service Trade Corporation of the Ministry of Commerce announced the "List of Key National Cultural Export Enterprises and Key Projects for 2021-2022", and both MiHoYo and Genshin Impact were selected.
In the 2022 "New Fortune 500", the three founders of MiHoYo are all on the list: Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei and Luo Yuhao, with net worth of 55.35 billion yuan, 30.51 billion yuan and 28.89 billion yuan respectively, ranking 73rd, 145th and 145th respectively. 157 bits. It is worth mentioning that Song Tao, miHoYo’s angel investor, also made a lot of money from investing in miHoYo in his early years, ranking 231st with a net worth of 20.2 billion yuan.
03
It is said that miHoYo has become the first choice for working in the post-00 generation
In recent years, miHoYo has also had a fatal attraction for the new generation of migrant workers. A new four-letter phrase has quickly become popular in the gaming circle and even the Internet circle – if you have rice, choose rice, which means that once you get an offer from MiHoYo, the choice will be no longer suspense.
In February of this year, MiHoYo launched the first round of school recruitment in 2023, which is also the first wave of school recruitment among game companies. Many users certified as MiHoYo employees are active on the community platform and release internal promotion codes to provide internal promotion for positions. ; Under relevant content, many fresh graduates chanted "If you have rice, choose rice" and "Do you still have a chance to work for MiHoYo?" There was even a note showing MiHoYo's work badge, with a number of likes as high as 1.4 Ten thousand.
There is also a popular joke on the Internet. A promising artist in the company was poached by MiHoYo. The boss wanted to try to retain her, but he replied: "She went to "Genshin Impact"!"
MiHoYo why? The reputation brought by "Genshin Impact" is naturally the most direct reason. Compared with many other major game companies that "have always been good at developing multiple businesses", MiHoYo is still the representative of "craftsman spirit" in the hearts of 2D mobile game enthusiasts. In the evaluation of users, "MiHoYo is There are few companies in China that can concentrate on making games."
Of course, remuneration is also a very important factor. Many headhunters and HR have said that the prices MiHoYo offers for top talents are among the first in the industry. In general Internet companies, a considerable part of the salary of Tencent's level 12 and above employees will come from stocks, and the upper limit depends on the specific project; MiHoYo's Offer is generally pure cash, and due to the small number of products, successful projects The proportion is higher, and the final number is often more impressive.
What people are talking about is MiHoYo’s corporate culture. A MiHoYo employee who once worked in a large factory said that he valued the company’s idealism the most: “This trait is very rare in China.” For example, in the employee handbook, they spent a lot of time explaining “technical nerds save the world.” "World" vision, discussing whether the future of mankind is the stars and the sea or the virtual world. The company's history of making numerous big bets and the corporate culture of "pursuing the ultimate" have also created a temperament that attaches great importance to research and development.
According to internal miHoYo employees, the company has a very strong two-dimensional atmosphere. You can cosplay any character you like to work, often hold two-dimensional parties, get free access to Genshin Impact peripherals, and have free working hours without clocking in, etc.
In this way, MiHoYo has become the "dream love company" for workers born in the 2000s: regardless of whether there is an opportunity or not, most job seekers will submit a resume to it first.
Today, the social value of the game industry is being re-evaluated. Since the game version was unfrozen in April last year, this once-frozen track seems to have been turned on again, and the primary market has become active again, with a number of well-known VCs reappearing.
Finally, a VC friend lamented that MiHoYo relied on games to earn foreign exchange and had enviable cash flow, but then turned around and invested in cutting-edge technology. This may be the poetry and future of China's new generation of founders.
Reference material:
1. "Boys born after 1985 create a valuation of 100 billion, VCs collectively missed it" Investment Industry; Yang Jiyun
2. "Is MiHoYo becoming a talent black hole?" 》Game Grapes; Thomas' Head
