MiAO Secures Over 100 Million Yuan Investment from X.D. Network

Yesterday, XD Inc. (02400.HK) announced that it had acquired a 5.3% stake in MiAO for $14 million.

MiAO is a startup founded by former Giant Network CEO Meng Wu. Shortly after its founding, the company secured investment commitments from Monolith, HSG, and Gaorong Capital, closing a 100 million RMB angel round. MiAO's flagship project remains firmly in the team's wheelhouse: large-DAU evergreen games.

According to sources, MiAO has raised multiple rounds over the past few years, totaling nearly 500 million RMB, including capital from a major internet company. Based on XD's $14 million investment for 5.3% equity, MiAO's overall valuation now stands at $264 million, or roughly 2 billion RMB.

In the context of the gaming industry in recent years, a startup reaching this level of funding and valuation is genuinely rare. In fact, quite a few publicly listed gaming companies don't even command such figures.

The strong investor confidence in MiAO likely stems from Wu and his team's track record. Previously, at Giant Network, Wu led the development of Ball Battle — a perennial hit with tens of millions of DAU — and incubated Super Sus, which reached millions of DAU. The team achieved this purely through organic user acquisition, building multiple large-DAU games from scratch. This is a capability that many smaller teams, and even major studios, lack.

MiAO's growth potential is presumably another key factor. Once a large-DAU game hits, a company's value can skyrocket virtually overnight.

Sources close to MiAO say Wu has developed a systematic methodology for building large-DAU games. Giant Network's market cap recently climbed to 50 billion RMB, with many attributing the surge to the strong performance of Supernatural Squad. The team behind Supernatural Squad grew out of the Ball Battle team, and the creative philosophy between the two games runs in the same vein.

Notably, when miHoYo president Wei Liu stepped down as XD's non-executive director in 2023, Wu stepped in to fill the role, also joining XD's Strategic Development Committee.

Meng Wu

Sources say MiAO already has a new title in closed testing, and the results so far have been promising.