Beyond Pico, one other excessive in home VR – iQiyi’s subsidiary VR firm Dream Blossom has been reported to have ceased operations.
Yesterday, a number of insiders from Dream Blossom revealed to Sina Technology that the corporate’s enterprise is at present stagnant and over 100 workers haven’t been paid. Currently, some workers have been sending personal messages to Gong Yu, the CEO of the father or mother firm iQiyi, by means of inner OA software program. However, they aren’t glad with Gong Yu’s response.
Another worker revealed that the wage arrears and enterprise suspension this time have been primarily because of the incomplete arrival of the $5568 million C-round financing introduced by the corporate in January, which led to a break in the funding chain.
In January of this yr, Dream Blossom introduced the completion of Round C financing. This financing was collectively invested by Qingdao Jingkong Group and True Knowledge Capital, with a complete funding of $5568 million. According to insiders, this financing is a phased allocation with performance-based clauses. However, Dream Blossom failed to realize its predetermined gross sales goal and due to this fact couldn’t get hold of the entire financing quantity, solely receiving tens of thousands and thousands.
But this assertion has not been formally confirmed. Currently, iQiyi and Dream Blossom have additionally not responded to this matter.
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According to the knowledge supplied by the aforementioned workers, the variety of individuals at present in the “Dream Blossom” wage protest workforce at iQiyi has reached 133, together with authorized personnel who’ve already resigned however are nonetheless owed wages.
Among them, a number of “Dream Blossom” workers despatched personal messages to Gong Yu and obtained a reply stating, Dream Blossom and iQiyi are separate authorized entities. iQiyi has been making each effort to help Dream Blossom in financing. The administration of Dream Blossom is actively in search of options to beat difficulties. Please be affected person and rational!
However, some workers nonetheless specific dissatisfaction with this response. They imagine that when the idea of the metaverse was standard, iQiyi typically used their firm for packaging and exterior promotion. In addition, iQiyi took the lead in altering administration they usually additionally obtained emails from senior executives at iQiyi. Now that one thing has occurred, they’re emphasizing that there are two separate enterprise entities.
According to public info, on December 1, 2021, iQiyi Intelligent formally introduced its renaming as “Dream Blossom” and its complete entry into the metaverse. On January seventeenth of this yr, Dream Blossom as soon as once more introduced its renaming as “Qingdao Dream Blossom Technology Co., Ltd.”, with the corporate’s headquarters situated in Qingdao West Coast New Area. It additionally introduced that it has secured a C-round financing of $5568 million.
In communication with Sina Technology, a number of workers of “Dreams Blossom” expressed that the $5568 million financing has not been absolutely obtained, which can be one of many causes for the delay in wage fee.
As a home VR firm, backed by iQiyi‘s online video and technological capabilities, Pico has always been regarded as an important player in the domestic VR brand landscape. In the industry market, it is compared to ByteDance’s “PICO”.
Two years in the past, there was a VR “hot trend” each domestically and internationally. The American social media firm Facebook introduced its rebranding as Meta, whereas the home expertise business centered on the metaverse/XR storm.
But in the previous yr, there was a normal cooling down in this subject.
In November 2022, Meta’s metaverse enterprise unit Reality Labs introduced a full-year lack of $13.7 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg introduced the layoff of 11,000 workers. Later this yr, one other 10,000 workers have been laid off. In April of this yr, Microsoft additionally introduced the dissolution of its newly established industrial metaverse workforce after solely 4 months.
The chilly air of the decline in the abroad metaverse has unfold to the home market. A bunch of home metaverse and XR producers have successively initiated a value discount and effectivity enchancment “movement”: On February sixteenth, PICO was reported to have laid off lots of of workers, optimizing the ratio by 20% to 30%; on the similar time, Tencent Games’ XR enterprise will change its {hardware} growth path, and associated enterprise groups may even be adjusted. In addition, Kuaishou has additionally disbanded its panoramic video enterprise, and Ma Yingwu, the particular person in cost, has resigned.
As of June sixth this yr, with the announcement of Apple’s first MR product, Vision Pro, the long-dormant metaverse subject has regained a glimmer of confidence. At that point, some business insiders predicted that though it’s at present dealing with a downturn, with the official launch of Apple’s Vision Pro subsequent yr, the MR business might progressively transfer in direction of a path of confidence.
Unfortunately, the dream of “Dream Blossom” in the metaverse might not stand up to this wave of chilly spells.
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