In May this year, Shanghai State Investment Corporation announced the establishment of the PMC Future Fund, which mainly invests in future digital industries, including artificial intelligence, metaverse and other fields. A few days ago, this fund finally landed. According to industrial and commercial information, on June 24, Shanghai Shanghai Yuanchuang Future Private Equity Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership) was registered and established with a capital contribution of 512 million.
The fund is managed by Fu Teng Capital, a subsidiary of Shanghai State Investment Corporation, and LPs include Shanghai State-owned Assets Fund of Funds, Lingang Holdings, Caohejing Corporation, Xuhui Capital, Chengdu Trading Investment and other state-owned institutions, as well as industrial parties such as miHoYo, Bilibili, and SenseTime.
On the one hand, this is a new fund established in April this year after the merger and reorganization of Shanghai State Investment Corporation and Shanghai Science and Technology Venture Capital Group, marking a new stage of Shanghai's science and technology innovation investment. On the other hand, the establishment of this fund reflects the side-by-side cooperation between the main enterprises of the Shanghai chain and state-owned assets, which will play an important role in promoting Shanghai's artificial intelligence, metaverse and other industries.
Chain master enterprise + Shanghai state-owned assets
The most typical feature of the PMQ Future Fund is the strong combination of "Shanghai chain main enterprise + Shanghai state-owned assets".
The most representative of its Chinese assets LP is Shanghai State Investment Corporation. Founded in March 2021, SDIC is wholly owned and directly supervised by the Shanghai State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) with a registered capital of RMB 10 billion.
In the first half of this year, Shanghai SDIC and Shanghai Science and Technology Venture Capital Group merged and reorganized. Shanghai Science and Technology Venture Capital Group is the earliest and only state-owned platform in Shanghai dedicated to serving early-stage science and technology investment. The merger of the two state-owned platforms is seen by the outside world as creating a "Shanghai version of Temasek".
PMQ Future Fund is a fund initiated and established by Shanghai State Investment Corporation, and its management agency is also the investment platform "Fu Teng Capital" under Shanghai State Investment Corporation.
In January 2022, Shanghai State Investment Corporation, as the largest shareholder, jointly established Futeng Capital with Lingang Group, SAIC Group, CATL, Bilibili, CITIC Capital, Boyu Capital, Wu Yuefeng Capital, Boyuan Capital and other companies and institutions. It can be seen that it not only has the attributes of state-owned assets, but also gathers the strength of the industry.
Moreover, its business scope is not only PE/VC direct investment funds, but also includes fund of funds and S funds. According to industrial and commercial information, at present, Futeng Capital manages 5 funds, and has invested in many institutions such as Wofu Capital, Boyu Capital, Shangqi Capital, and Haitong Kaiyuan.
In the latest PMQ Future Fund, this cooperation mechanism between state-owned assets and industrial parties is also continued. The LP includes SenseTime, Bilibili and miHoYo, which are the main chain companies in the field of Shanghai's digital economy.
In 2021, SenseTime Technology established a professional investment institution focusing on the field of artificial intelligence, SenseTime Guoxiang Capital. Just a few days ago, it also participated in the angel round of financing of up to 700 million yuan in Galaxy General Robot. As an LP, it has invested in Jinqiu Fund, Hidden Hill Capital, Haitong Kaiyuan, Gimpo Investment and other institutions, with a cumulative capital contribution of more than 340 million yuan (excluding the investor Tang Guoxiang Capital and the PMC Future Fund).
Bilibili is more keen on direct investment. According to public information, it has made a total of 195 shots, especially in games, animation and other fields. As an LP, he has invested in Legend Capital, Yogurt Capital, and Ruicheng Venture Capital, but the scale is much smaller than direct investment.
The above two companies have been investing for some years, and the hottest cutting-edge LP at the moment is none other than miHoYo.
Upstart game, heavy position in science and technology
Since 2017, miHoYo has tried to get involved in equity investment. At that time, he invested in the Japanese commodity purchasing platform "Meng Buy". From 2017 to 2020, miHoYo continued to focus on its "main business" and invested in companies in the fields of animation, comics, and games, and the investment target has always been labeled as "ACG".
However, after 2020, miHoYo has continued to increase its investment in hard-core technology fields such as cloud computing, brain-computer interface, nuclear fusion, semiconductors, and commercial aerospace.
For example, the nuclear fusion company Energy Singularity, miHoYo has participated in two rounds of financing in 2022 and 2023; Participated in the Series A financing of Oriental Space, a commercial space company; It can also be seen in the C+ round of investment of Jingzhan Semiconductor, a developer of semiconductor gallium nitride epitaxial materials. What's more worth mentioning is that miHoYo also co-founded the brain-computer interface company Zero Unique Thinking with Professor Lu Baoliang of Shanghai Jiaotong University.
The attributes of cutting-edge technology are full.
In addition to direct investment, miHoYo is also an important LP.
Since 2021, miHoYo has invested in 4 institutions. In addition to the PMC Future Fund established this time, it invested in Boyu Capital and Wu Yuefeng Science and Technology Innovation in 2021, and Tongge Venture Capital in 2022.
Founded in 2011, Boyu Capital was co-founded by Zhang Zixin, former general manager of Ping An Group, and Ma Xuezheng, former China executive of TPG Capital. Originally, it was mainly engaged in equity investment, but now it has expanded its business to the fields of stocks and real estate, and is one of the largest PE companies in China. Wu Yuefeng Science and Technology Innovation is one of the earliest institutions to invest in semiconductors in China, and has launched more than 200 projects.
Compared with the above two institutions, Tongge Venture Capital is much younger.
In 2022, Goertek, the "big man" of Shandong electronics manufacturing industry, initiated the establishment of CVC Tongge Venture Capital. miHoYo, ByteDance, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, Bell Capital, CICC Capital and other industry parties and institutions participated in the formation of its first fund as LPs. So far, the fund has invested in 10 companies, including Tsinghua AI company Wuwen Xinqiong, Shandong semiconductor equipment company Sirui Intelligence, and XR startup GravityXR.
It is worth mentioning that according to the "2023 Hurun Report", Cai Haoyu, the former chairman of miHoYo, has a fortune of 67 billion yuan and is the richest man in Jinan. Goertek Jiang Bin (couple) was the new richest man in Shandong in 2020. The first time the two Shandong tycoons cooperated, they joined forces in venture capital.
Moreover, judging from the above-mentioned direct investment and LP investment time, 2020 is a key node for miHoYo's investment.
According to industrial and commercial information, miHoYo has 31 public investment incidents, of which 25 investments were made after 2020. On the other hand, before 2020, miHoYo focused on the main business investment "ACGN" (animation, comics, games, and novels) track, focusing on an industrial attribute. After 2020, there will be a significant spillover to investment in cutting-edge technology.
The fundamental reason, of course, is the increase in operating income, the increase in ammunition in hand, and the more areas that can be invested.
According to the miHoYo prospectus disclosed by the CSRC, from 2014 to the first two quarters of 2017, miHoYo's operating income was about 103 million yuan, 175 million yuan, 424 million yuan and 590 million yuan respectively, and the net profit was 66 million yuan, 128 million yuan, 273 million yuan and 447 million yuan. It has properly entered the stage of "well-off".
In 2020, with the listing of "Genshin Impact", miHoYo's revenue soared to 10.1 billion yuan, and its net profit was 5.7 billion yuan, an increase of 475% year-on-year. In one fell swoop, it became a 10-billion-level revenue company.
In the next two years, due to the termination of miHoYo's listing plan, the revenue was not disclosed. However, in June last year, miHoYo announced its operating data for 2022, with a main business income of 27.340 billion yuan and a net profit of 16.145 billion yuan in 2022, with an average daily net profit of more than 44 million yuan. This data hangs a number of A-share game listed companies, and it is only ranked behind Tencent and NetEase in China.
According to data released by the English-language game industry media GameIndustry.biz at the end of last year, in the global mobile game market, the top five publishers in terms of revenue in 2023 are Tencent, Activision Blizzard, Playrix, NetEase and miHoYo. It can be seen that miHoYo has become one of the most profitable game companies in the world.
Rich people are naturally more "capricious", miHoYo not only invested heavily in cutting-edge technology, but even the former chairman Cai Haoyu also took a back seat, saying that he would "invest more energy in the research and application of cutting-edge technology, the research and development of new projects, and the connection of domestic and overseas R&D resources".
From this point of view, game companies represented by miHoYo are undoubtedly becoming one of the promoters of technological innovation in China.