Complete the B round of Tencent financing with Aier Square with “story as the core”

On April 2, 2018, the domestic original animation production and production company – Chengdu Aier Square Culture Communication Co., Ltd. Announced that it has completed the B round of financing by Tencent Investment, with a financing amount of tens of millions of RMB. .

Aier Square was founded in 2013 and is mainly engaged in IP animation, animation film creation and production, and engine animation development. The founders Lu Hengyu and Li Weijie have always paid great attention to the importance of “story” in the animation creation work. Therefore, the team has positioned the company as “a story-based original animation production company” and led the team in the animation industry. A lot of good results have been achieved. .

The 2012 “100,000 Jokes” animated series of dramas opened the era of Chinese animation networks and became a real explosion animation. In 2014, the film “100,000 cool jokes” that landed on the cinema line and the series of sequels that released in 2017, “100,000 cold jokes 2” were all over 100 million. Along the way, Aier Square has achieved very good results in the domestic animation market. .

In 2016, the comic adaptation work “Soul Street” by Ai Square was launched. With the innovative spirit, superb adaptability and expressive ability of the founders and the team, the novel story structure and ingenuity of “Soul Street” The design of the plot has caused heated discussion for a time, attracting many new and old audiences, and showing a long tail effect different from the normal in the playing data. Up to now, it has only been broadcasted on both Youku and BILIBILI platforms, and the playback volume has reached 600 million. .

We all look at Aier Square’s “The ability to tell stories.”

At the end of 2017, Aier Square and Tencent completed the financing of Round B. At this point, Aier Square’s B-round investor Tencent, as well as the A-round investor Fang Tongshu, and the angel investor innovation workshop have all been on the board of directors. From the perspective of the professional side of the investor, what kind of ability do they have in mind? .

Tencent said: Aier Square has a strong “original” potential in “100,000 Jokes”, “Soul Street” and “The Brother”, even in the IP-engineered project, Ayr Square still shows a unique “storytelling” ability. In addition, the directors CP Lu Hengyu and Li Yujie and their team are more popular with the audience for their expressiveness and unique creative temperament, which attract Tencent to invest. .

The innovative workshop and the phoenix tree also expressed the same viewpoint and high recognition. Mr. Tong Yuliang, the founding partner of Wutong Tree Capital, said that pan-entertainment is one of the key areas of focus of Wutongshu Capital, and the investment logic in pan-entertainment content is simple. Words: “Quality” and “Quantity”. The content quality must be the head. At the same time, the company has better production capacity. Al square can tell good stories and can impress users. It seems that the two points are very simple, but it is the hardest to do, but they did it, and it is Continuously, Aier Square successively released “100,000 Jokes”, 1st and 2nd seasons, “The Brothers”, the first season, the movie “100,000 cold jokes”, “Soul Street”, and the movie “Ten The tens of thousands of jokes 2 are all explosions. “100,000 Jokes 2” is also the first in China’s original adult animation film in 2017, and the only one that broke the box office. Now that the company is already making its own original projects, we are also very optimistic. I believe that Ai’s original works can be recognized again. .

Finally, Fu Guodong, a financial consultant who helped promote cost round financing, believes that the Chinese animation industry has broad prospects, and the original ability and production strength of Aier Square have been successfully verified in many sub-sectors. With the excellent team and the support of Tencent, Wutong Tree Capital and the innovation factory, Air Square will definitely get better and better. .

After the financing of the company to transform, the story should be better.

“Speaking every story” is Lu Hengyu and Li Yujie’s long-term vision for the company. Since its inception, the team has been focusing on animation production, including 2D animation production team, 3D animation production team, And research teams for new technologies such as VR, engine animation, and motion capture. However, the core team is not satisfied with this. In 2017, Aier Square established the Beijing branch, adding a complete business chain with project development, data research, production, distribution, marketing, business, etc., Al square Positioning from an animation production company to a production and production company that can independently develop original projects. .

In the previous interviews by Lu Hengyu and Li Jiejie, they said that they wanted to create a square-year enterprise like Disney, and it turned out that Air Square is working towards this goal. At this point, while wishing everyone to complete the B round of financing, we also hope that the transformed Aier Square will bring more good stories and good works to the Chinese animation market. .

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