In order to become the next batch of BAT, "game industry" investor Zhou Yahui and his founder Kunlun Wanwei have recently moved more capital.
On the evening of January 9, Kunlun Wanwei disclosed that the company intends to transfer 100% of the equity of Leyun Small Loan to Fengtai Technology for a consideration of 515 million yuan.
However, Leyun Small Loan was only transferred from Kunlun Wanwei to Fengtai Technology, a subsidiary of Daikun Technology, which holds 66.7% of the shares of Zhou Yahui, the controlling shareholder and actual controller of Kunlun Wanwei.
In December 2022, Ningbo Dian Jin and Kunuo Tianqin, wholly-owned subsidiaries of Kunlun Wanwei, increased their capital in Green Vanadium New Energy with their own funds of 220 million yuan and 80 million yuan respectively, and obtained 60% of the shares of Green Vanadium New Energy.
Although it was a game, Kunlun Wanwei has long torn off the "game" label.
By investing in changing from an initial game company to an Internet company, and actively embracing the metaverse, Opera's transformation from a traditional browser to an information distribution and metaverse platform has been realized through AI and other technical means.
According to the data, Kunlun Wanwei was founded in 2008, and Kunlun Wanwei, which started with games, has maintained a good momentum of development since its listing in 2015.
At the same time, from Qudian and Yingke to Kuaikan Comics and e-commerce company Ruhan, Zhou Yahui and Kunlun Wanwei have made a lot of money in investment games, and the company achieved investment income of 493 million yuan, 444 million yuan and 684 million yuan respectively from 2016 to 2018.
Under the investment drama that began as a result, Kunlun Wanwei's business covers 5 continents and more than 70 countries and regions, building a multi-business map of information distribution, meta-universe, entertainment, and social networking with users all over the world.
At present, Kunlun World Wide has an average of nearly 400 million monthly active users, and overseas revenue accounts for 75%.
In his speech at the "2023 Finance China V Summit", Fang Han, CEO of Kunlun Wanwei, still emphasized that for many years, Kunlun Wanwei's overseas path, traffic is the main line, and social + gaming is the general direction.
But obviously, investment has become the background color of Kunlun Wanwei, not the game.
What do you think of a company like Kunlun Wanwei?
In this regard, China Times reporter Yu Yujin and Shule had an exchange, and Poor Dao thought:
Kunlun Wanwei is no longer a game company, and if it only relies on investment and makes money, it will not become BAT.
Although, Kunlun Wanwei always mentioned in and out of words that there will be a new BAT.
Fang Han mentioned in his speech at the above summit that with the blessing of demographic dividend, traffic dividend and era dividend, the prelude to the era of navigation has begun, and the earlier the layout in the next 10 years, the greater the opportunity; In the next 20 years, the overseas market is also very likely to give birth to the next batch of BAT.
It is undeniable that Kunlun Wanwei, which is not outstanding in the field of games, does have its own characteristics.
Kunlun Wanwei is a second-tier game company in the end-game era, with good works, but in the mobile game era, it no longer focuses on games, but looks for unicorns to invest in the global Internet industry and has achieved considerable success.
Therefore, Kunlun Wanwei is no longer a game company, and games are only a starting business and base for it, as a strategic depth, not abandoning but not the focus.
In fact, Kunlun Wanwei itself has set its sights on some more novel tracks, such as AIGC.
The so-called AIGC refers to the technology of artificial intelligence to replace people to create text, images, code and other content.
Kunlun Wanwei started the layout in 2020, set up a R&D team of more than 200 people for AIGG research and development, and released the full series of "Kunlun Tiangong" AIGC algorithms and models on December 15.
It is reported that Kunlun Wanwei, based on the self-developed AIGC model, can already meet the basic outsourcing needs of many of its own businesses.
For example, Fang Han said that the cost of Bao Art may account for more than 60% of the cost of the game, and with AIGC-related models, the cost can be reduced by about half.
In the future, Kunlun Tiangong will fully activate the "nervous system" of Kunlun Wanwei's internal diversified business, improve the content generation ability of business sectors such as metaverse, entertainment, and social networking, and promote the kinetic energy switching of internal business.
In other words, as an "investor" in the game industry, Kunlun Wanwei has handed over the task of becoming a new generation of BAT to its own innovative business.
However, it will take time for such a business to mature, and the blood transfusion work during this period still has to "please" Kunlun Wanwei's own investment business.
Author Zhang Shule, People's Daily News, People's Posts and Telecommunications columnist, CEI Media think tank expert, senior TMT industry commentator