MiAO Secures Another Nine-Figure Investment, Targeting Game+Social Product with Gaorong Ventures Backing Since Angel Round
From purposeful play to purposeless play.
On August 4, XD Inc. (02400.HK) announced it would acquire a 5.3% stake in MiAO, an innovative game company, for $14 million — a transaction that values MiAO at nearly 2 billion RMB. Gaorong Ventures co-led MiAO's angel round in 2022 and has continued to increase its position in subsequent funding rounds.
Founded in 2022, MiAO is dedicated to creating unexpectedly delightful entertainment experiences for global users through innovative game products and services.
MiAO founder Meng Wu previously served as CEO of Giant Interactive. The founding team averages over 15 years of experience in gaming and internet industries, and has successfully built multiple large-DAU games from scratch — including leading development of the evergreen title Battle of Balls, which reached tens of millions in DAU and hundreds of millions in MAU, as well as incubating Super Sus, which achieved millions in DAU.
The team's entrepreneurial mission stems from recognizing a massive untapped opportunity in the industry: social is the future of gaming. Games are becoming the entry point for a new generation of platforms; the game-plus-social virtual world represents the next platform-level opportunity.
Currently, MiAO is developing a groundbreaking product — a multiplayer open-world game. The title has already entered limited technical testing and has shown promising results.
At a Gaorong Ventures closed-door session, Wu shared his thinking on opportunities in today's gaming industry, the convergence of games and social, AI-plus-gaming, and more. Below are highlights from his perspectives:
The Biggest Inflection Point — Chinese Teams Going Global
Today, globalization and cross-platform development represent major trends worldwide. The gaming industry is entering a phase of stable, sustainable global growth.
Chinese-developed games are capturing an increasingly large share of the global market. In 2024, China's self-developed game market reached $55 billion (with mobile games accounting for $45 billion) — $40 billion domestically and $15 billion overseas. Chinese self-developed games now represent 30% of total global gaming revenue, and 50% of mobile gaming revenue.
The global phenomenon of Black Myth: Wukong further proves that "winner takes all" — great games face no cultural barriers and can conquer markets worldwide.
In short, the gaming industry is experiencing its biggest inflection point: Chinese teams competing on the global stage. This stems from years of accumulated growth and maturation in China's gaming industry.
From an industrialization standpoint, over the past two decades China's game industry has built up talent, experience, and tools, turning the impossible into the possible;
From an aesthetic sensibility perspective, today's younger generation of entrepreneurs are themselves gamers, driven by ambitions beyond mere profit;
Third, business models have matured. A super product = scale + sustainability = compounding returns = a long-lived company. GaaS products show stable user numbers and revenue, as seen with Honor of Kings and Genshin Impact.
The Fusion of Gaming and Social, Creating the Next Super Platform
We believe games as an entry point are incubating a new generation of platform opportunities. Gaming has become indispensable social language for young people — for Gen Z, lifelong gaming engagement is the future.
At the same time, products with social attributes enjoy longer lifecycles and greater platform potential, as exemplified by Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox. "Who you play with matters more than what you play; play games, make friends."
Thus, the industry faces a critical pain point: social is the future of online gaming, yet demand remains vastly underserved.
Why is the social need so intense? Humans are inherently lonely. Hardwired for survival, we must gather with our kind — social connection enables us to survive and thrive.
Games provide a remarkably effective social environment, creating a space of imagination. In this magical social world, new friendships are born, rescuing us from endless loneliness; in turn, these connections create positive ripple effects in real life and society.
MiAO aims to use games as an entry point to connect hundreds of millions of users, delivering superior entertainment experiences while exploring the possibilities of game-social integration.
The Possibilities of Gaming + AI
AI brings unprecedented opportunities to the gaming industry. Our long-term aspiration is "one sentence generates a Genshin Impact"; yet we must also recognize that AI won't replace existing experiences, and in the near term will struggle to surpass current gaming experiences.
In the short-to-medium term, AI is the faucet, gaming scenarios are the land, but effective fertilization requires pipes to deliver precisely. "Water doesn't automatically flow to every field; AI won't automatically satisfy all needs. Gaming companies should focus more on building their own pipes."
In the long run, AI + gaming represents the next generation of entertainment, opening entirely new tracks that will complement rather than replace existing games.
Going forward, AI will profoundly reshape the gaming landscape in two critical dimensions.
First, AI will fundamentally transform content creation. As an entirely new creative paradigm emerges, content production costs will trend toward zero, triggering explosive growth in both quantity and quality — forming an infinitely expandable universe;
Second, AI will reshape social experiences. Using AI to create and nurture more realistic, engaging characters, these characters will become connectors within game worlds, making virtual worlds more authentic and captivating.
These two dimensions will fundamentally transform the gaming industry, and this transformation is essential for games to evolve into a new generation of platforms — what we call the shift "from purposeful gaming to aimless gaming."
