36氪 was exclusively informed that the real-time cloud rendering solution provider “Wei Ling Times” has completed a B2 round of financing of US$40 million. This round of financing was led by Temasek, and the old shareholders Mingshi Capital and CDH VGC also participated in the investment; Huaxing Capital and Fan Zhuo Capital jointly served as the financial advisor. After the completion of this round of financing, Weiling Times will further improve the strategic layout of software and hardware based on real-time cloud rendering, accelerate the construction of the next-generation computing power base, promote the construction of the overall ecology of the cloud rendering industry, and plan to expand its business to overseas markets . At the same time, Wei Ling Times will explore the next-generation content form based on VR/AR scenarios on the basis of the existing business, and expand the application space of the development environment on the cloud.
36氪 has previously reported that Weiling Times was established in 2019 and has completed 5 rounds of financing totaling 100 million yuan within three years. In addition to this round of investors, it also includes Shunwei Capital, Dunhong Assets, Xiaomi Group, Mihayou, Investment institutions and industrial chain enterprises such as China Mobile Games and Kingsoft Cloud. In the past year, as a cloud game product solution provider for well-known games such as “Cloud Genshin Impact”, Wei Ling Times has broadened the choice of hardware platforms for game players, and also brought more online channels for game manufacturers.
According to the “China Game Industry Report in the First Half of 2022”, the number of mobile game users in China has reached 650 million, and the actual sales revenue accounts for 74.75% of the total market revenue. Compared with the leading position of mobile games, client games only account for the market size. 20.80%. The continuous development of cloud games is expected to continue to allow more mobile game users to experience the fun of console games through mobile devices.
Guo Jianjun, founder and CEO of Weiling Times, told 36氪 that the number of domestic mobile game users is several times that of end game users, and cloud games provide convenience for mobile game users, allowing users to experience top-level games on more smart devices. work. It is understood that the revenue growth of Wei Ling Times has exceeded 400% for two consecutive years, and it is expected to reach hundreds of millions of yuan in 2022. On this basis, the team continues to optimize cloud rendering and transmission costs, and future cloud game payment prices will be further reduced.
While serving game makers and players, Wei-Leader has gradually realized that the GaaS (Graphics as a Service) era has arrived, and to take the lead in this trend, it is necessary to make an in-depth layout around the entire industry chain. Since the completion of the last round of financing at the end of 2021, based on the advantages of the original cloud game sector, Wei Ling Times has begun to develop in key areas such as virtual world exclusive servers, cloud rendering-based digital human development platforms, and next-generation software “Ark Architecture”. Carry out business development.
At the hardware server level, Wei Ling Times established a silicon-based mainland business unit to customize ultra-high-density GPU servers according to a new rendering method and software architecture, reducing overall industry costs and improving processing efficiency. At present, the first batch of products from Silicon Continent has been delivered, helping partners reduce rendering costs by 25%, verifying the feasibility of seeking extremely low hardware costs in the GaaS industry.
“Spring Grass”
In August this year, as a representative work of “Ark Architecture”, China’s first movie-level cloud-native game “Spring Grass” was officially released. Through the complete transformation of the software structure and development collaboration method, the film industrialization standard was introduced into the game production concept, and the Wei Ling era also began to explore the field of VR/AR.
It is worth mentioning that Wei Ling Times has reached a strategic cooperation with Haixi Media to jointly promote the digital person “Spring Grass” to officially debut as a hyper-realistic digital actor. While constantly building digital human technology application standards, Wei Ling Times will also launch a platform content production tool chain to help creators complete the creation of digital humans and the construction of metaverse activity scenarios.
Chuncao officially debuts
Guo Jianjun said that as a fusion work of games and movies, it is not important whether “The Legend of Spring Grass” is positioned as a “3A game”. What is important is that users can enter the virtual world from the perspective of God and gain a strong sense of immersion. This is what the team believes. What is important is also the focus of the Wei Ling era’s layout in the metaverse field. Combined with the cloud-based content architecture and cloud-related technologies of content development, future VR content will have a lower threshold for creation.
In the future, Weiling Times will use “Spring Grass Biography” as a template, integrate all technical capabilities into a set of cloud developer OS, open source a large number of tools, engines and methodologies to developers, and provide developers with platform standardization capabilities. , and the cloud-native model allows developers to liberate computing power
Under the background of the current Metaverse industry, Wei Ling Times will also gradually complete the software and hardware layout in the XR market , and realize a virtuous circle of common development of hardware equipment and content ecology. According to IDC data, in 2021, the global AR/VR headset shipments will reach 11.23 million units, a year-on-year increase of 92.1%, of which VR headset shipments will reach 10.95 million units. According to Valve statistics, in July 2022, Steam VR active players accounted for 6.67% of the total number of players, an increase of 4.80 percentage points from the previous month (1.87%), and is constantly breaking through the highest level in history.
From hardware, tools, to architecture, and content, with the implementation of related businesses, the era of leadership has started from cloud games to the coordinated development of the four major businesses, and has initially completed the layout of the GaaS industry chain centered on real-time cloud rendering. The development of the next digital era still requires the overall maturity of the industrial ecology. In the past few years, technology companies represented by the Weiling era are helping the industry to complete the accumulation of cloud native from 0 to 1. When the entire industry scale and user coverage reach a certain level With the popularity of more powerful hardware devices, cloud rendering and cloud games will meet the needs of users in more fields.
Views of companies and institutions related to this round of financing
Guo Jianjun, founder and CEO of Wealing Times, said: “Since its inception, Wealing Times has been determined to do the difficult and right things. Starting from its own advantages, building and promoting the ecological development of the industry will be our unremitting line in the future. Temasek attaches great importance to The long-term trend highly overlaps with the concept of WELEAD ERA. We are very happy to join hands with each other. With the advantages of investors in global vision and industrial resources, WELEAD ERA will speed up its overseas exploration in the next stage. I hope that with the great efforts of industrial partners With this support, we can move forward steadily, with real-time cloud rendering technology as a fulcrum, to welcome the arrival of the metaverse era.”
Mingming Huang, founding partner of Mingshi Capital, said: “Mingshi believes that the future digital world will have an unprecedented rich experience, and it will certainly bring opportunities for the next-generation computing platform. Based on this understanding, we will lead the investment in Weiling in 2021. Times. After a year, we are very excited to see that both the overall industry and the company are developing in a positive direction. After the great success of “Yun·Yuanshen”, more and more Game manufacturers have started the development of 3A-level cloud games; in addition to the pan-entertainment scene, enterprise customers’ demands for digital twins and immersive displays have also begun to rise. Under this background, Weiling has realized the development of server architecture, engines, development tools and other technical fields. A breakthrough. We are honored to participate in this exciting journey and look forward to creating greater value for the industry in the era of Wei-led.”
Wang Lin, founding partner of CDH VGC, said: “As an old shareholder, we are fortunate to witness the rapid iterative upgrade in a field of huge value such as cloud gaming, and a more comprehensive industry based on real-time cloud rendering technology has been formed. Chain layout. Wei Ling Times has always revolved around the next generation of content, insisting on long-term polishing of the underlying technology, providing users with the best quality experience, and as an industry leader, it has promoted cloud games from controversy to consensus. We will continue to support Wei Ling Times, committed to Bringing the best technology to users, participating and witnessing the process of shaping the future world.”
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- 2022-09-26WeiLing Times completes a $40 million B2 round of financing led by Temasek
- 2021-12-01Wei Ling Times completed 400 million yuan in Series B financing, led by Mingshi Capital
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