**The stock price fluctuates greatly, and there is no clear business model… Hatsune Miku was born 15 years ago, has the virtual human industry “taken off”?**
*2021 is the “first year of the Metaverse”, and this year, virtual humans, which are regarded as “entry-level” products of the Metaverse, have also become popular. So has the virtual human industry “taken off”?*
In fact, the concept of “virtual idols” appeared in Japan as early as 30 years ago, and the more well-known virtual singer Hatsune Miku was born in 2007. In recent years, virtual people represented by virtual idols such as Luo Tianyi are not uncommon in life.
However, according to Jiang Shan, founder of Huawen Venture Capital, the virtual human industry is still in its infancy. “The virtual human track needs some more imaginative and more ambitious teams for the future digital world.” Recently, Jiang Shan bluntly said in an exclusive interview with a reporter from “Daily Economic News” that virtual humans are in the process of market application popularization and business model exploration. And the process of gradually forming a virtual human digital library, with the improvement of artificial intelligence and algorithm computing power, the information collection ability and learning ability of virtual human will be upgraded, and the entire industry will take another step forward.
Riding the east wind of the Metaverse, the concept of “virtual digital human” in the capital market has frequently attracted market attention.
As the 2021 A-share exam is coming to an end, how will the 2021 “transcripts” of these companies with the halo of “metaverse and virtual human” perform? Every reporter found through data statistics that in the past year, among the 28 “virtual digital human” concept stocks, 25 companies’ stock prices have achieved a cumulative increase in 2021. Among the 26 companies that have disclosed annual reports or performance forecasts, 19 companies achieved profits and 7 companies suffered losses.
It is worth noting that among the 28 “virtual digital human” concept stock companies, according to Shenwan’s industry standards, the media industry companies accounted for the largest proportion, with 13 companies, followed by computer industry companies. In addition, textile and apparel, architectural decoration, leisure services and other companies have also entered the game.
“The virtual human track is still in its infancy and exploration period, the stock price fluctuates greatly, and there is no clear business model.” Wen Hao, deputy director of Tianfeng Securities Research Institute and chief analyst of Media Internet, accepted the “Daily” on April 21. Economic News said in a WeChat voice interview that it is difficult to determine which companies are good or bad, and which of so many virtual people can be remembered by consumers? The current pattern is uncertain. Investors can consider companies in the virtual human track from the perspectives of technical capabilities, operational capabilities, creative capabilities, and business models.
Last year, there were 66,000 new domestic related enterprises
The financing amount is as high as 254 billion yuan
Before the industry booms, the capital market always takes the lead.
Since the second half of 2021, concept stocks related to virtual humans have risen sharply, and although they have fallen back since then, it proves the attention of this emerging thing.
From virtual idols to virtual people, technology has brought the virtual world closer to the real life of human beings, and it has also brought convenience in all aspects. For example, in film and television works, complex actions can be completed by virtual humans; in the field of consumer product marketing, more and more virtual humans appear, and they can even bring goods for sale; in bank counters, routine interactions can be completed by a single virtual human.
At the beginning of this year, a reporter from “Daily Economic News” used Qixinbao to count the development of virtual human enterprises in recent years. Data shows that in 2021, there will be 66,000 new virtual human-related enterprises in China, and 2,843 financings will be raised, with a financing amount of up to 254 billion yuan. By January 2022, there will be more than 160,000 virtual human-related enterprises in China. In less than a month, the number of financings in the virtual human field will reach nearly 100, and the financing amount will reach 411 million yuan. The whole industry is showing a blowout trend.
The layman is watching the excitement, and the layman is more alert to the hidden dangers under the boom. Jiang Shan, founder of Huawen Venture Capital, who has been deeply involved in the technology and entertainment industry for many years, said in a face-to-face interview with a reporter from “Daily Economic News”: “The virtual human track has been very popular recently, but investment institutions will consider this market more carefully. Rational. Just like starting in 2015, many companies have been doing VR, as if they will be eliminated if they don’t do VR. Now less than 10%, or even less than 5%, of those companies that do VR can survive. There are many companies that cannot get investment at all. Therefore, although there are more and more virtual human companies, most companies without core technologies and business models may have a life cycle of less than one year.
25 “Virtual Digital Humans” Concept Stocks
Accumulated stock price gains in 2021
In 2021, under the popularity of the metaverse, the “virtual digital human”, which is regarded as the entrance of the “metaverse” scene, has become a “window” for capital to enter the game.
Judging from the overall increase in the “virtual digital human” sector of the stock bar, before February 2022, the entire sector continued to rise amid fluctuations, and the highest increase was once as high as 16.15%; from February to April 2022, the entire sector fell amid fluctuations. The highest drop was over 24% at one point.
Driven by the popularity of the sector, every reporter noticed that the 28 “virtual digital human” concept stocks in the sector were also highly sought after in the capital market, and their stock prices and market value fluctuated significantly.
Choice data shows that among the 111 “Metaverse” stocks, 63 companies’ annual stock prices will fall in 2020; by 2021, only 28 of the above 111 companies will have a cumulative annual stock price decline. .
Specific to the “virtual digital human” sector, in 2021, among the 28 concept stocks, only 3 companies’ annual stock price increases will be down, and the remaining 25 companies’ annual stock price increases will be up in 2021. Among them, Chuanwang Media and Jiachuang Video will have the highest cumulative stock price increase in 2021, with an increase of 490.28% and 172.98% respectively.
Compared with 2021, in 2020, when the metaverse and virtual digital people are not yet popular, 17 of the above-mentioned 28 companies have a cumulative annual stock price increase of decline.
Among them, Mango Supermedia has the highest annual share price increase in 2020, with a cumulative increase of 101.09%; however, in 2021, the cumulative annual share price increase of Mango Supermedia will drop, with a cumulative decline of 24%. According to public information, at the end of 2021, Mango Supermedia will aim at the “Metaverse”, not only releasing the first batch of digital collections, but also laying out virtual digital people, launching digital people “Yaoyao” and “Xiaoyang”. When responding to investorsâ?? questions on the interactive platform, the company stated that the company plans to launch more virtual characters in line with the companyâ??s main business development and the needs of market audiences in the future.
Also attracting market attention is Jebsen. In the capital market, the share price of Jebsen shares fell by 7.44% in 2020; in 2021, the share price increased by 95.05%. It is understood that Shiyou Technology, a company in which Jebsen shares shares, is a virtual technology provider. It is reported that Shiyou Technology has created “resurrection” of nearly 500 virtual IP digital people for customers.
Regarding the stock price fluctuation of the virtual digital human sector, Wen Hao believes that this is because the virtual human is still in its infancy, characterized by large fluctuations in the stock price and unfulfilled performance.
The virtual human race track is still in the early stages of development
Nearly half of the 28 concept stocks are media companies
As of April 27, 23 of the 28 virtual digital human concept stocks disclosed their 2021 annual reports or performance reports, and 3 companies announced their 2021 performance forecasts.
Among the 26 companies that disclosed annual reports or performance forecasts, 19 companies will achieve profitability in 2021, and only Mango Supermedia, iFLYTEK, and Leyard have a net profit of more than 500 million yuan. 7 companies suffered losses, of which 4 companies including Aofei Entertainment and Jiachuang Video continued to lose money, and 3 companies including Yunnan Tourism and Saturday turned from profit to loss.
From the data point of view, as Wen Hao said, the performance of virtual human concept stocks has not yet been realized.
This is because although the above-mentioned companies are classified as “virtual digital human” concept stocks, most companies do not focus on virtual human business, and some companies even start to deploy virtual human races at the end of 2021. Among the 23 companies that have disclosed their annual reports, only a few companies such as Tianyu Digital Technology, Jiachuang Video, Torsi, and Leyard mentioned the concept of digital human or virtual human.
In addition, every reporter also noticed that the listed companies included in the “virtual digital human” concept stocks belonged to many different industries. According to the industry standard classification of Shenwan, among the 28 companies, there are 13 companies in the media industry and 8 companies in the computer industry. Different industries, companies have different layouts for the virtual human field.
Tianyu Digital (formerly known as Tianshen Entertainment) will take e-sports games and data traffic as its main business after the reorganization. In its 2021 annual report, the company clearly stated that it will focus on the two aspects of virtual digital human research and development, production and IP incubation and operation. Similar to the previous “Women’s Shoes First Stock” Saturday, which made rapid progress in the live broadcast e-commerce track through digital transformation, now the company has launched virtual people such as “Kong Xiang” and “Zhou Xiaoyu” to further enrich the live broadcast e-commerce gameplay.
In addition to enhancing the competitiveness of the original main business through virtual human products, another part of the enterprise relies on the original technology accumulation, focusing on the production and service of virtual human.
For example, Torsi relies on the company’s core technology of Chinese natural language processing and massive data accumulation, etc., its intelligent virtual human products have been practically applied in Beijing Winter Olympics broadcast, government affairs question and answer, news writing and so on. Leyard, which has optical motion capture technology, develops virtual reality business with this technology as the core, provides virtual reality application solutions and services, and incubates digital human assets.
Facing the different paths of companies in different industries on the virtual digital human track, which type of company is more likely to attract the attention of investors? Wen Hao suggested that, as an industry supported by technology, the core element of virtual human is the technical ability of the enterprise, and the operation ability, creative ability and business model of the company should not be ignored. “The industry is still in the early stage of development. Except for some large platform companies, it is difficult to determine which company will come out. Therefore, opportunities and challenges coexist.”
Digital reproduction, virtual immortality
When the “metaverse fever” swept the world, virtual people stood out as a big scene entrance and became the new favorite of capital.
In fact, Jiang Shan has been incubating and investing in Odin Technology since 2019, and has been laying out the virtual human track for two and a half years.
According to Jiang Shan, before the concept of the metaverse became popular, he had already realized that virtual humans would be the application trend in the future. At that time, when the global film industry was cold, Jiang Shan dug up a group of special effects engineers from top Hollywood projects and established a VR product underlying technology company, that is, Odin Technology. Since then, Odin Technology has developed four hardware systems including Loki Emotion micro-expression acquisition. At present, the company can already compete with the technology of the global first-line Metaverse company.
Therefore, having the core technology is the key. In Jiang Shan’s understanding, Odin Technology is more like a scientific research institution. “We are the combination of the bottom layer, hardware, database and algorithm to make a few closed loops, and we will not be ‘stuck’ by outside technology at any time, and we have probably created hundreds of material libraries for ‘Sapiens sapiens’ , and it hasn’t been published, we don’t want it to become a content marketing company.”
“Technology companies can’t make content. In the future, it will reach the industrial-level application of the Metaverse. The technical threshold does not seem to be low at present. We still hope to do a good job in technology and products, and leave the content to more professional people.” Jiang Shan said, “There are very few companies in the industry that rely on algorithms to make facial expressions well.”
Compared with the “digital human” or “virtual human” that is often said in the market, the “digital human” created by Odin Technology is already in the third stage. Jiang Shan said frankly that although the statements are similar, the essential differences are very big.
“1.0 to 2.0, it has been more than two years, we have not done any commercialization, most of the companies in the market are still in the first two stages. Virtual human refers more to a digital asset, more based on The avatar, 1.0 is more about solving a good-looking skin; in 2.0, the expression of the character will be upgraded again, and I hope it can achieve performance-level effects. In 3.0, we will give it the ability to learn and wisdom, and convey expressions and emotions. Jiang Shan said that the Sapiens created by Odin Technology incorporates a large amount of human biological information, such as details of human biological indicators such as iris, fingerprints, and hair strands.
In the future, as technology gives Sapiens more self-improvement learning ability and emotional logic, Jiang Shan believes that the interaction, communication, companionship, and virtual social interaction between Sapiens and users will be applied to the scene.
The use of scenes is closely linked to the larger framework of the Metaverse. “A lot of people abroad are talking about the ‘digital wisdom immortal, immortal’ of virtual people. Your life data will have a carrier. Is this carrier a photorealistic database of a person’s life, or a free-growing digital sapiens after endowment with wisdom. , it depends on the final choice of the user.â?
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