ErGeng Closes RMB 100 Million Series B+ Round Led by Source Code Capital, Cementing Its Position as a Short-Video Industry Leader

Today, ErGeng announced the completion of a 100 million RMB Series B+ funding round, led by Yunfeng Capital with follow-on investment from Source Code Capital. Founded in 2014, ErGeng initially launched as a WeChat official account, publishing its first original video every evening at "Er Geng" (around 9–11 PM). In May 2015, it merged with the major self-media account "Midnight Canteen."

According to data provided by ErGeng, since its launch, the company has produced over 2,800 videos with cumulative views approaching 20 billion, daily views exceeding 50 million, and nearly 50 million followers across all platforms.

In March 2016, ErGeng raised over 50 million RMB in a Series A round from ZhenFund and Cornerstone Capital. This January, it completed a 150 million RMB Series B round led by Yuanjing Capital, with follow-on from Houde Qianhai and Ether Capital, and additional investment from existing institutional shareholders Cornerstone Capital, ZhenFund Growth Fund, and Oriental Fortune Capital.

ErGeng founder Feng Ding stated that following the Series B+ round, ErGeng will pursue strategic development in the following directions to strengthen its advantages and consolidate its industry leadership:

1. Upgrade and expand its city station network, establishing ErGeng's position as a city media operator;

2. Prioritize building ErGeng Academy, partnering with government and university resources to train and incubate film and video creative talent at scale through education programs;

3. Continue deploying its content marketing system nationwide to serve domestic and international brand enterprises, becoming a partner in corporate media transformation;

4. Establish an online video content production platform to build China's largest HD video asset library.

1 Four Paths to Monetization in the Short-Video Industry

Generally speaking, commercial pathways in the short-video industry fall into four categories: advertising, e-commerce, IP, and paid content. Feng Ding noted that ErGeng's monetization currently focuses on B2B, with a cautious approach to consumer-facing offerings, while expressing optimism about the prospects for paid content.

According to Feng Ding, advertising represents ErGeng's primary revenue model, and the company has already achieved profitability. Particularly in commercial custom production, in the first half of this year alone, it completed over 100 million RMB in contracted orders, representing year-over-year growth of 800%. Currently, 70–80% of ErGeng's short videos are regular content, with the remaining 20%+ being monetizable commercial content. In Feng Ding's view, this ratio reflects ErGeng's distinctive monetization model.

This is grounded on one hand in ErGeng's established nationwide marketing system, and on the other in its ongoing exploration of nationalization, scale, and diversification on the content side.

ErGeng currently employs over 300 full-time film and video professionals and collaborates with more than 1,000 city stations and PGC teams domestically and internationally, producing over 250 original videos monthly. Beyond its flagship ErGeng micro-documentary format, the company is building out a diversified, verticalized content brand matrix.

ErGeng has already launched content in lifestyle, fashion, music, and other verticals, with finance and sports content planned for future release. In the first half of this year, the city station strategy continued to advance. Beyond its four directly operated stations in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Hangzhou, ErGeng successively launched stations in Suzhou, Xi'an, Changsha, Xiamen, and others — totaling 19 domestic city stations. International stations in Japan and Australia have gone live, with a North American station coming soon.

Feng Ding noted that amid the broader trend of corporate media transformation, numerous local enterprises need video content to tell their stories, and city stations' video production capabilities can meet this demand for brand mediaization. By year-end, ErGeng expects to have 30 city stations operational.

2 The Short-Video Advertising Market Is Poised to Explode

Feng Ding believes that in coming years, quality content will become the core competitive advantage, with positive-value content representing the industry trend; sustained original production capacity will become a barrier to entry, with advantageous resources concentrating toward leading content companies; short-video marketing demand will grow rapidly with clear monetization prospects; and the video-ification of images and text across major e-commerce internet platforms will ignite a new wave of video growth.

Na Li, Managing Director at lead investor Yunfeng Capital, stated that the migration of user attention toward short-video formats is a sustained, irreversible trend, and short video will become the fastest-growing content format. As user attention shifts, the short-video advertising market will explode.

Yi Cao, Founding Partner at Source Code Capital and one of the investors in this round, believes that short video, as a fundamental form of content consumption, is increasingly becoming key to attracting user traffic and time spent. Driven by consumption upgrading, the development space for premium short video has opened up, with enormous room for imagination.

Ge Wei, Vice President at Tudou under Alibaba Culture and Entertainment Group and an ErGeng platform partner, pointed out that short video has become a major trend in recent years, with Youku, Tudou, and UC actively investing, and Ali Entertainment launching "Dayu Account," alongside participation from Kuaibao, Penguin Account, Yidianzixun, Xigua Video, and others... Many platforms have entered the short-video business. With more players joining, the number of professional producers in the short-video space has grown dramatically, and quality international content producers are entering the domestic market, fully demonstrating confidence in this sector.

Chen Fuyun, Weibo's Deputy General Manager of Operations and another ErGeng platform partner, also noted that the short-video industry is a massive sector currently in robust development and already reaching initial scale, with even greater room for growth ahead. Traditional film and television directors, entertainment professionals, and traditional media talent... an increasing number of specialized professionals are entering this field. ErGeng was among the first batch of organizations to partner directly with Weibo last year, with clear advantages in account scale and content production volume, very high content quality, and already forming a strong competitive moat.

3 ErGeng Achieves Scaled Original Production Capacity

In the six months since completing its Series B round, ErGeng's content production has focused on advancing "nationalization, scale, and diversification" according to plan, establishing a nationwide marketing system and achieving notable results with ErGeng Academy.

Particularly worth noting, in the first half of this year ErGeng made city stations a strategic priority, bringing the ErGeng brand to first- and second-tier cities across China. Beyond the four directly operated stations in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Hangzhou, ErGeng successively launched stations in Suzhou, Xi'an, Changsha, Xiamen, Tianjin, Henan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Qingdao, Changzhou, Shandong, Nanjing, Ningbo, Liaoning, and Heilongjiang — totaling 19 domestic city stations. The Japan international station has gone live, with North American and Australian stations launching shortly.

Feng Ding noted that amid the broader trend of corporate media transformation, numerous local enterprises need video content to tell their stories, and city stations' video production capabilities can meet this demand for brand mediaization. ErGeng city stations possess brand influence in video production, sustained original video production capacity, and traffic access through nationwide distribution channels — clear advantages. By year-end, ErGeng expects to have 30 city stations operational.

Currently, ErGeng employs over 300 full-time film and video professionals and collaborates with more than 1,000 city stations and PGC teams domestically and internationally, producing over 250 original videos monthly — truly achieving scaled production capacity for original premium short video. Beyond its flagship ErGeng micro-documentary format, the company is building out a diversified, verticalized content brand matrix. Entertainment sub-brands include Entertainment Fun, Fun Music Hall, and mol Fashion, covering film and television, music, fashion, and web series. Lifestyle sub-brands include A Thousand and One Lives, One Person's Food, and Hidden Menu. Upcoming verticals include finance and sports, currently in content development.

In terms of revenue, ErGeng grew rapidly in the first half of this year, with commercial video custom production revenue alone increasing 800% year-over-year and over 100 million RMB in contracted orders completed. The company has achieved profitability and entered a track of healthy development.

4 Favorable Timing, Geographic Advantage, and Talent Strengthen Industry Position

Since its launch, ErGeng has produced over 2,800 videos telling the stories of more than a thousand ordinary people, with cumulative views approaching 20 billion, daily views exceeding 50 million, and nearly 50 million followers across all platforms, consistently ranking at the top of major video charts.

Na Li noted that the industry remains in a stage of insufficient quality content supply, making quality content extremely valuable in the value chain and ensuring continued prosperity on the production side. The investment in ErGeng is primarily based on its leading position in the short-video industry.

Yi Cao believes that short-video development aligns with favorable timing, geographic advantage, and talent convergence: favorable timing in consumers' growing demand for quality content, geographic advantage in continuous upgrades to information technology, hardware, and bandwidth capacity, and talent convergence in the emerging wave of premium creative teams. Going forward, resources and traffic will increasingly concentrate toward leading content producers like ErGeng.