MiHoYo's Three Founders Crack Hurun Top 100 as AI Pivot Transforms a Game Studio Into Industrial Capital
The $1.4 Billion Wealth Surge Behind China's Most Aggressive Gaming-to-AI Conversion Story
Genshin Impact built the cash engine. Artificial intelligence is now setting the valuation multiple. MiHoYo, the Shanghai-based game developer behind a portfolio of globally dominant anime-style titles, has emerged in 2026 not merely as a content company but as one of China's most consequential pools of early-stage industrial capital—a shift that has added nearly RMB 1 trillion (US$138.9 billion) in combined paper wealth to its three co-founders within seven months.
The 2026 Hurun China Rich List, published October 27, marked the first time all three MiHoYo co-founders appeared simultaneously in the top 100. Chief Executive Cai Haoyu, 39, ranked 33rd with personal assets of RMB 128 billion (US$17.8 billion), up RMB 47 billion year-on-year. Co-founders Liu Wei and Luo Yuhao entered at 76th and just behind, with RMB 70.5 billion (US$9.8 billion) and RMB 66.5 billion (US$9.2 billion) respectively. A year earlier, only Cai appeared in the top 100 on the same list. The rankings broadly mirror MiHoYo's equity structure: Cai holds approximately 41% of beneficial interest, Liu roughly 22.6%, and Luo around 21.4%, according to corporate registry data from Tianyancha.
The velocity of the gain demands context. The Hurun U40 Global Self-Made Rich List, published in March with a January 15 cut-off date, pegged Cai's fortune at RMB 84 billion, Liu's at RMB 47 billion, and Luo's at RMB 45 billion. The October list used a September 1 cut-off. The arithmetic is stark: the bulk of a combined RMB ~97 billion (US$13.5 billion) increase accrued across roughly seven months—a period during which MiHoYo's core gaming revenues were, by most third-party measures, under pressure.
Core Gaming Slows, Forcing a Strategic Reset
The wealth surge cannot be attributed to mobile game momentum. MiHoYo does not publish financial statements; external analysts rely on third-party app intelligence. According to Sensor Tower's 2025 annual overseas ranking, MiHoYo slipped to fifth place among Chinese mobile game publishers by overseas revenue—trailing Tencent, Habby, NetEase, and Lemon Micro Entertainment. Per Qimai Data, estimated iOS revenue in China for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail fell approximately 37% and 43% year-on-year in 2025, respectively, as the anime game segment grew more crowded with entries from Tencent, NetEase, Hypergryph, and Perfect World.
MiHoYo has responded on the product front: Zenless Zone Zero launched on Steam on July 4, planting MiHoYo's flagship titles on the world's largest PC distribution platform; a new life-simulation title Starcatcher Valley is slated for winter 2026; and Cai himself is credited as producer on an unannounced project codenamed Varsapura, for which gameplay footage has been publicly released. These moves signal a deliberate broadening of platform reach, but they are incremental responses to structural pressure rather than step-change revenue inflections.
A RMB 100 Billion AI Commitment Reprices the Company
The more significant market re-rating event was a public commitment made in May 2026. At a technology symposium, Liu Wei stated that MiHoYo's upper-bound investment in large language models over the next three years would reach RMB 100 billion (US$13.9 billion)—a figure that likely exceeds the company's annual revenue—and added that failure would be an acceptable outcome. The statement was not a traditional corporate earnings guidance; it was a deliberate signal of strategic intent designed to reframe how external observers price the company.
Subsequent public appearances reinforced the narrative. At a campus recruitment event at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Liu stated MiHoYo aims to become a "heavyweight" among domestic large model development teams within two to three years. The framing shift is commercially rational: a gacha-monetization game studio commands one type of valuation multiple; a cash-generative AI infrastructure company with proprietary deployment scenarios commands another. From the Hurun wealth trajectory, the market—or at least the private-market consensus embedded in those figures—has moved toward pricing the latter.
An equity catalyst amplified the effect. MiHoYo holds approximately 5.1% of MiniMax, the AI startup that listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on January 9, 2026. MiniMax's share price peaked at HK$1,097 in March 2026, temporarily valuing MiHoYo's stake at close to HK$20 billion on paper. That single position—entered at a reported angel-round cost implying over 100x paper return—is now embedded in the founders' Hurun valuations, providing a concrete, listed-market anchor for wealth calculations that had previously been based entirely on private estimates.
How MiHoYo Built an Unlikely Venture Portfolio Without a Single Outside Investor
MiHoYo's path to becoming an allocator of capital is itself a distinctive story. Founded in early 2012 by Cai, Liu, and Luo in a Shanghai Jiao Tong University dormitory, the company launched on a RMB 100,000 (US$13,900 at current rates) interest-free loan from the Shanghai Technology Innovation Center. The only institutional backer in the early years was Song Tao of Sky-mobi, who injected RMB 1 million (US$138,900) in late 2012 for a 15% stake. That position was worth approximately RMB 24 billion by the 2024 Hurun Global Rich List—arguably the highest-return angel investment in Chinese gaming history. MiHoYo has not raised a single external round since.
Beginning around 2018, with Honkai Impact 3rd generating durable cash flows, MiHoYo began deploying capital. The company has made direct investments in approximately 30 entities, with deal activity peaking at eight transactions each in 2020 and 2021. It has also taken limited partner positions in funds managed by Tongge Venture Capital and Futeng Capital, at roughly 11.4% and 9.8% stakes respectively, gaining indirect exposure to CATL, semiconductor companies including Xinai Technology, Jingluet Semiconductor , Jinalzhen Microelectronics, and Quanxin Manufacturing, and biotech firm Zhengxu Biotech. The combination of direct investment and LP participation is unusual among Chinese game publishers.
The early portfolio had a logical topology: figure maker Pulscom Culture, cloud gaming provider Yeclound Era, gaming media outlet Jikook, puzzle entertainment company Aumo—all entities adjacent to MiHoYo's IP ecosystem, effectively extending its anime content franchise into adjacent commercial channels. The company also joined Taptap Interactive as a cornerstone investor at its 2019 Hong Kong IPO alongside ByteDance, Lilith Games, and Papergames. Industry observers described the early strategy as "building a moat around its anime empire."
The MiniMax Bet Reveals a Structural Advantage Over Financial VCs
The investment that validated MiHoYo as a serious venture player was its participation in the angel round of MiniMax in late 2021. Founder Yan Junjie, a former SenseTime executive, raised a round alongside Hillhouse Capital, IDG Capital, and Yunqi Capital, totaling US$31 million at a pre-money valuation of US$170 million. MiHoYo subsequently participated in multiple follow-on rounds; Liu Wei joined as a non-executive director; and MiHoYo became a paying customer, deploying MiniMax's models for NPC dialogue generation and narrative production inHonkai: Star Rail. MiniMax's IPO prospectus designated MiHoYo alongside IDG Capital as the two "Lead Senior Independent Investors."
The angel-round entry was not won on price. MiHoYo's competitive advantage was structural: Shanghai Jiao Tong University alumni network trust, a live deployment environment for AI models, and the credibility of a first revenue contract—three things that dedicated financial VCs cannot replicate. The same pattern recurs across the portfolio. Brain-computer interface company Lingwei Yisi, co-founded in 2021 with Cai's doctoral advisor and SJTU professor Lu Baoguang, came with an academic relationship. Nuclear fusion startup Energy Singularity pitched Liu with two slide decks, reportedly securing a RMB 20 million commitment. Private rocket company Dongfang Space, founded by Tsinghua alumnus Yao Song, and brain-computer interface research all follow the same pattern of investment-via-relationship rather than investment-via-deal-flow.
Within weeks of MiniMax's March 2026 price peak, two other MiHoYo-backed companies filed for Hong Kong listings: social platform Soul (Soul App) and collectible card platform Suplay (Suplay)—MiHoYo's second- and first-largest institutional shareholders respectively. Three companies from a single private portfolio entering public market processes within roughly six weeks is a concentrated liquidity event by any measure.
Capital Reallocation Signals AI Infrastructure, Not Just AI Application
Since Cai stepped down as chairman in 2023, MiHoYo's external deal pace decelerated sharply—just one transaction each in 2024 and 2025—before re-accelerating in 2026 with a notably narrower mandate.
In April 2026, MiHoYo co-led a seed investment into Guangzhou Weixiao Technology, the studio of former Age of Civilizations producer Li Kaimin, at a post-money valuation above US$100 million alongside IDG Capital and 37Games. Simultaneously, MiHoYo backed Xuanming Network, founded by a former producer known as Xuanzi, focused on 2D female-oriented narrative games.
October's activity was more hardware-oriented. On October 19, compute-in-memory chip developer Mingxin Qirui—sponsored by Academician Liu Ming—closed a Series A round exceeding RMB 400 million (US$55.6 million), with MiHoYo, Boyuan Capital, and GigaDevice as investors. Days later, a second compute-in-memory company, Jiutian Ruixin—founded in 2018 in Shenzhen by engineer Liu Hongjie and closing three funding rounds in a single year with Meituan strategic investment, Xpeng Motors, and Changcun Industrial Fund also participating—disclosed MiHoYo's strategic investment arm in its latest round.
On October 22, three days after the chip investment, MiHoYo divested its 49% stake in Lingwei Yisi, formally exiting the brain-computer interface project it launched in 2021. The simultaneous entry into AI silicon and exit from neurotechnology is not coincidental. It maps a capital reallocation from exploratory "founder-loyalty" bets toward infrastructure components—specifically the compute-in-memory chips that address inference-cost bottlenecks in large model deployment—that MiHoYo cannot build internally but requires to execute its AI roadmap.
The portfolio logic, reconstructed: pre-2021 investments defended IP; 2021–2022 investments expressed conviction in specific founders and frontier science; 2026 investments target the AI supply chain. Liu's stated RMB 100 billion AI ceiling is predominantly allocated to internal R&D; external investments are calibrated to fill capability gaps, particularly in custom silicon. "We don't do investments; what we do is purely out of passion," Liu said at an SJTU event. The chip deals suggest the passion has become strategic.
Gaming Companies Emerge as a Structural Force in China's AI Funding Ecosystem
MiHoYo is not the only gaming company discovering that large model founders value a distribution partner over a pure financial return. 37Games holds stakes in three large model companies including Zhipu AI ; in Q1 2026, the company's investment income surged 981% year-on-year, primarily from fair-value adjustments following Zhipu's listing.
The pattern is durable because the structural advantages are real: gaming conglomerates hold cash-generative core businesses, possess consumer-facing deployment scenarios that let AI models go from training to production without an additional sales cycle, and carry genuine anxiety about being disrupted by the very technology they are funding. For early-stage AI and semiconductor companies, a commitment from a major game developer frequently arrives bundled with a first commercial contract—a combination that pure-play financial VCs are structurally unable to match.
NetEase Chairman Ding Lei saw his personal fortune decline by RMB 45 billion over the same period, settling at RMB 275 billion (US$38.2 billion) to rank eighth on the Hurun list. The three SJTU dormitory founders now sit, in aggregate, roughly RMB 10 billion below China's dominant gaming patriarch. Whether MiHoYo's AI wager at RMB 100 billion closes that gap—or widens it—will depend on whether its large model investments generate product differentiation before a newer wave of anime content competitors erodes the mobile revenue base that still funds everything else.
Related Coverage:
miHoYo Commits RMB 100 Billion to AI, Repatriates Silicon Valley LLM Team
China’s Mobile Gaming Surges as MiHoYo Jumps 71% and Publishers Capture 42.6% of Revenue