You can grasp everything big and small in the venture capital circle
Tencent Venture | ID：qqchuangye
"When industry players start mass-producing 'Liu Yexi', how much imagination space does the virtual person track have?"
The source of this article is "All-Weather Technology" (ID: iawtmt), which is reprinted by Tencent Venture with permission.
Author/Yu Huiru
Editor/Lijuan Luo
"If the metacosm is likened to a spaceship sailing into the future, then virtual idols are the necessary tickets."
Guotai Junan wrote in the research report. Last year, the meta-universe boom, under its "radiation", games, entertainment and other related fields began to enter the "virtual blue ocean", virtual human track also followed the fire.
In the New Year's Eve activities of major platforms in 2022, a number of virtual people appeared, for example, Teresa Teng's avatar sang on the same stage with singer Zhou Shen; Luo Tianyi, a virtual idol who had appeared on the Spring Festival Gala in 2021, also performed on the same stage with Hard Candy Girl 303.
Image source: Screenshot of Zhou Shen's Weibo
"Cherish the days of rolling in with real colleagues, they are at least personal." After the virtual person Cui Xiaopan won the 2021 Vanke Best Newcomer Award, netizens have expressed their feelings.
Cui Xiaopan's name comes from the reminder and prompt work she is responsible for, that is, "urging" and "hoping". In the 10 months of employment, the response to the document processing prompted by Cui Xiaopan was 7 times that of the traditional IT system, and the write-off rate of overdue documents of prepaid receivables reached 91.44%.
"The original intention of creating Cui Xiaopan is to give the system algorithm an anthropomorphic identity, communicate with colleagues in a more temperate way, and let the digital world and the human world work together to promote work." Vanke Group replied to all-weather technology.
On the last day of October 2021, a Douyin account "Liu Yexi", which is positioned as a virtual beauty expert, uploaded a video titled "Now, the world I see, you can also see" video.
In just two minutes of video, cyberpunk and antique fantasy scenes are cross-staged. The video garnered more than 3 million likes and millions of fans in 24 hours, and was on the hot search.
The above research report mentioned that the virtual person refers to the anthropomorphic image built by CG technology and run in the form of code. The classification method also varies according to the style, production theme, application scenario, driving method, etc. In addition, according to the different art styles, the virtual human figure is divided into cartoons, anthropomorphism, realism, hyper-realism and so on.
In fact, the story of the virtual person is not new. Before Liu Yexi, there were already virtual people entering the public eye and trying to commercialize.
In 2007, Hatsune Mirai was born with the blessing of VOCALOID speech synthesis technology, becoming the first world-famous 2D virtual singer, and its popularity continues to this day.
Since then, with the advancement of 3D modeling, AI, motion capture, holographic projection and other technologies, the design of virtual people has gradually developed in the direction of 3D and hyper-realism.
At the same time, the commercial application scenarios of virtual people are also more abundant, in addition to entertainment, games, automobiles, real estate and other traditional industries also try to use virtual people as a carrier of content output and enter the track of young marketing.
According to Tianyancha data, there are more than 288,000 related enterprises in the mainland that are "virtual people" and "digital people", and from 2016 to 2020, the growth rate of newly registered enterprises in 5 years will increase by nearly 60%.
Liu Yexi Image source: Weibo
Performances, goods, endorsements, entry into the factory... More and more "virtual people" are active in the market, and thus roll up the snowball of capital and entrepreneurial tides. As virtual humans become widely used, they are also thought to be the next business myth, but is this really the case?
1
"Soft on work"
Four years ago, when the company had to transform, Chen Jian did not expect the outlet of the virtual live broadcast industry to come so quickly.
In 2015, he founded Chuangfan Technology from VR/AR solutions.
In 2017, due to the immature development of technology caused by poor experience, expensive prices and other issues, the market was not opened, many VR experience stores closed in a short period of time, the amount of venture capital in the global VR/AR industry plummeted, the industry entered a cold winter, and Chuang fantasy technology was naturally affected.
"In 2017, the company had basically no money on its books, and I had to concentrate on providing a set of products that the market needed and could be quickly monetized." Jian Chen said to all-weather technology.
At that time, the virtual anchor "Kizuna AI" had been active on YouTube for half a year. Trippick Love was the world's first VTuber (virtual anchor) designed by manga artist Motoya Morikura and anime author Tda-esque to design the "holster" (avatar). Once launched, it was highly sought after by users, and the followers continued.
According to different core interaction methods, virtual people are divided into intelligent-driven virtual digital and real-person-driven virtual digital people.
Intelligent-driven virtual digital people are based on deep learning technology, which is essentially some kind of algorithm, but will have a customized virtual appearance. For example, Hatsune Mirai, Xiaobu and Hua zhibing have been applied in the fields of entertainment, voice assistants, and teaching, respectively. The human-driven virtual digital person is based on the real person as the core, and the user can form a virtual avatar on the network through 3D modeling, motion capture technology, rendering and other technologies.
Trip love is the latter. It uses a series of computer technologies such as face capture, motion capture, and sound processing to apply the facial expressions and movements of a voice actor to a leather case, so as to achieve activities in videos and social networking sites.
Soon, this gust of wind blew from YouTube to Station B. The popularity of tripping love gave Chen Jianxin a new idea, "Although virtual people were not as popular in Japan at that time, I personally feel that there will definitely be many companies that will enter the market to do this thing in a year." ”
After comparing and evaluating multiple market segments, Chuangfan Technology decided to start from virtual live broadcasting. "We want to provide our customers with a set of virtual live streaming tools that are like 'fools' operations, and it doesn't require any expertise from the other party's (customer's) operators." Chen Jian said.
In 2018, Chuangfan Technology's virtual live broadcast tool was launched on the market, which seized a group of customers on platforms such as Station B who wanted to try to start a business in the virtual live broadcast field but had a low budget, in order to open up the situation.
With the development of the industry, today, in addition to providing live broadcast tools, Chen Jian has expanded his business to virtual idol IP operations and other fields.
"At the beginning of the epidemic in 2020, the virtual live broadcast was a little fire, but it was quickly extinguished. Now it's because of the metaverse concept of fire. Chen Jian told All-Weather Technology that the virtual person industry has taken advantage of the east wind of the meta-universe, which not only saves him the cost of educating users, but also brings the company "two companies a day on average" investment intention consultation.
"If you count the density, it should be at least ten times that before the concept of the metaverse fire." Chen Jian added.
Also feeling the market heating up is Shanghai Manfushe Cultural Communication Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shanghai Manfushe"), which provides customized business solutions for digital people.
"From the beginning of 2021, we are basically in a state of receiving work and receiving soft hands." Its co-founder Zhang Jiamin revealed to All-Weather Technology that not only that, the company has also attracted a group of investors who come to talk about their intentions.
The company is also the content producer and operator of Harbin Beer's virtual spokesperson, Ha Sauce. In July last year, Ha Sauce, born in 2019, officially signed a contract with Warner Music's dance music label Whip Records, becoming Warner's first virtual music artist.
Image source: Courtesy of Shanghai Manfu She
With the success story of Ha Sauce, Shanghai Manfu Society tried to go further in the field of virtual idols. According to Zhang Jiamin, the company plans to launch 5 virtual idols in the next step, which also includes the virtual human image of the star.
Multiple startups in the same circle also clearly feel the enthusiasm of capital. According to Tianyancha data, in the past year, there have been more than ten virtual digital people-related investments, concentrated in virtual digital people, virtual idols and related technologies in the field of pan-entertainment.
Take the cross-dimensional virtual IP content development and operation company Nishi Culture as an example, last year, the company completed two rounds of financing in 3 months, raising millions of dollars, leading investors including Internet giant NetEase.
Not only NetEase, but also giants such as ByteDance and Ali are accelerating the layout of virtual idols.
The latest investment information comes from ByteDance, on January 6, Hangzhou Li Weike Technology Co., Ltd., which created a virtual IP image "Li Weike", announced the completion of a multi-million yuan angel round of financing, which was exclusively invested by ByteDance.
"The movement of the big factories can represent the direction of the industry to a certain extent, and these layouts also show that their attitude towards virtual people is clear." Ding Wei, a primary market investor who has long tracked the meta-universe market, told All-Weather Technology.
2
"Most of the IP is in the bleeding phase"
In the application field of virtual people, most of them are currently concentrated in the enterprise market and the entertainment market.
The former includes Vanke Cui Xiaopan, Baixin Bank virtual brand officer AIYA Aiya, etc., and the landing scenarios of such virtual people mainly include collaboration, service, marketing, etc.
In addition, most of the application scenarios of virtual people are concentrated in the entertainment market. Including virtual anchors and virtual idols with IP attributes, they are active in the fields of fashion, music and advertising, and currently have a greater influence on Liu Yexi, Alibaba virtual employees AYAYI, Ling, Ha Sauce, Ah Xi and so on.
Liu Yexi, AYAYI, Ling, Ha Sauce Source: Weibo
For these virtual idols, traffic is still the mother of commercialization. Therefore, the platform party with traffic support or long-term content output has become the preferred cooperation object of most virtual person production companies.
"After cooperating with Warner, Ha Sauce is really going to embark on the road of idol artists, Warner has many years of experience in creating artists, Ha Sauce follows Warner step by step, I believe it can develop into a virtual idol of the head." Zhang Jiamin said.
On September 29 last year, Ha Sauce, which adopted Microsoft's intelligent voice customization technology, released its new song "MISS WHO" on QQ Music, NetEase Cloud Music and other platforms, officially debuting as a singer.
With single eyelids, thick lips, and a blue head, Ha Sauce is positioned as an idol-created hip-hop singer. In the biography, she loves the national fashion, is familiar with both popular music and traditional culture.
Yang Yayu, director of Warner Music, introduced that Ha Sauce is Warner's "testing the waters" in the field of virtual singers, "We want to see if virtual people in music and art entertainment are likely to cultivate superstars, or whether they can become an IP with development prospects and commercial value." ”
For the future, Yang Yayu said that she does not reject the possibility of signing a second and third hash sauce after tasting the "sweetness".
With the human design, "endorsement" has also become a conventional choice for the commercialization of virtual idols.
Virtual idols such as AYAYI, Ah Xi, and Ling have attracted a number of domestic and foreign brands to cooperate. AYAYI, which takes the fashion route, has won the brand LV, L'Oréal, Porsche and so on. Recently, Ah Xi has become the recommendation officer of Yadi electric vehicle replacement series, before that, Ah Xi also cooperated with Zhong Xuegao, Chery, etc., covering automobiles, food, FMCG, jewelry and other fields.
Image source: Weibo
Monetization is the ultimate goal of all business activities.
Data from the Guosheng Securities Research Institute shows that virtual anchors are one of the best ways for virtual people to achieve their current commercial achievements. "In November 2021, the virtual anchor of Station B, 'Jiale Carol', set a single monthly revenue of 2.14 million yuan, occupying the top spot. Among them, a birthday party live broadcast that lasted for 4 hours generated a single income of 1.89 million yuan. ”
But such achievements are not common. Another set of public data shows that as of August 18, 2021, of the 3472 virtual anchors that Have relative attention to Station B, 1827 have a revenue of 0 yuan in the month, and more than half of those without income.
"Most of the virtual human production companies or IP are still bleeding, and they are still burning capital money. If everyone on the virtual person track can't get the investment, 90% will die, and the function of their own blood is not yet there. Chen Jian said.
The "Liu Yexi" team previously said in an interview with the media that in the more than half a year before the launch of "Liu Yexi", the cost investment has been "far more than one million". Even though Liu Yexi currently has more than 8 million fans, she is still in the stage of burning money and sucking powder. Since the release of the first video last year, Liu Yexi has published 6 short videos, none of which are long, but the cost is not low.
Mars Culture has disclosed that a few minutes of customized video of its avatar "Silent Sauce" cost tens of thousands of yuan.
However, the output is still not "provincial". Zhang Jiamin believes that users have no stickiness to virtual people without content output, and the attractiveness of virtual people's IP depends on the continuous output of high-quality content, which is one of the most expensive links in the operation of virtual people.
Corresponding to the input, the virtual person is not optimistic in terms of income.
The UBS report pointed out that the upfront investment cost of advanced virtual characters is on average 30 million yuan, such as the virtual girl group A-SOUL, the production cost of singles is about 2 million yuan, and the cost of an offline concert is about 20 million yuan. Another set of surveys shows that only 6.3% of people are willing to spend more than 500 yuan on virtual idols, and their willingness is still relatively low.
3
First entry placeholder
The cake of the virtual man track is tempting.
The growth trend of virtual anchors on domestic platforms and industry reports point this out.
According to the financial report of Station B in the second quarter of 2021, based on the rapid development of live broadcasting and large member business, the revenue of Station B's value-added service business increased by 98% year-on-year to 1.63 billion yuan. In the field of entertainment, virtual anchors (VUP) have become the fastest growing category of B station live broadcasting. In the past year, more than 60% of the world's well-known virtual anchors have started broadcasting on Station B.
At the same time, at the previous 12th anniversary celebration, Chen Rui, CEO of Station B, mentioned that from June 2020 to June 2021, a total of 32,412 new virtual anchors were launched, an increase of 40% year-on-year, and the total number of submissions exceeded 1.89 million.
Industry market research platform Toubao Research Institute predicted in the "2021 Virtual Digital Person Industry Overview Series Report" that thanks to the development of virtual IP, virtual second doppelgänger and multi-modal AI assistant applications, after ten years, the market size of China's virtual digital person industry will reach 270.3 billion yuan.
"That's why companies are desperate to squeeze in." Zhang Jiamin said that he understands the urgency, "Most of the new companies that come in are coming in when they see the market is hot, and they may also think that it is better to raise money." ”
Among the virtual human start-up teams exposed by all-weather technology, there is a group of post-00s, and the team members are from Peking University and Tsinghua University, majoring in computer science. After graduating from undergraduate last year, they decided to start a business in the direction of virtual people, and soon got the first million financing round.
Founder Huang Qing said that in the past few months, dozens of customers in the fields of automobiles, home furnishings, and Internet finance have come to her to talk about cooperation. Among them, an Internet finance company plans to build a meta-universe APP, hoping that Huang Qing can provide technical solutions to generate avatars for each user, and in the other party's plan, this project will invest tens of millions.
"I thought we would only do our own original IP, but I didn't expect that after making one, some customers would take the initiative to come to us to do it." Actually now I think this new model will be better because it guarantees that you have cash flow in the first place. Huang Qing said to all-weather technology.
However, in the eyes of people who have been in the virtual person industry for several years, the heat of capital cannot cover up the problems such as less content production and limited technology.
"The popularity of the metaverse concept has brought too much help to virtual people out of the circle, anyone comes, as if anyone can do virtual people, many IPs on the market claim to be virtual people, but the quality is uneven." Take a photo and P head to call yourself a hyper-realistic virtual person. Chen Jian said that the threshold of modeling is not high, and there are many talents who can model, but there are not many who seriously do virtual human products, and there are even fewer who can technically achieve hyper-realistic virtual people.
Zhang Jiamin also felt the same way. "If you look at the latest batch of companies that have come in, you can see that either the team that failed to do the game or the team that failed to do the film and television. They saw that the track was hot and rushed in, but most of them didn't really do virtual people. ”
The reason is very simple, the track is hot, there is a lot of money, even if there is no strong technology, the first entry place has the possibility of success.
For the entry of large factories, Ding Wei also summarized it as "occupying the position first". However, compared with startups, large companies have absolute advantages in technology, capital, talent reserves, etc., and if they find a good target investment or personally go down, the latter has a higher chance of winning.
Concepts, outlets will one day pass, whether an industry can survive and develop for a long time, in the final analysis, depends on whether there is content, people, and money to make.
"Content, ecology, these are well built, in order to nourish the industry." Ding Wei said.
(Ding Wei and Huang Qing are pseudonyms in the text)
END
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