Having made consecutive investments in two companies within four days, miHoYo has spent a huge amount of money once again.

Game Digest has just learned that miHoYo has successively invested in two chip companies, with an interval of only 4 days between the two investments.

According to the financing information publicly disclosed on October 22, 9Nano has accumulated a total of 1 billion yuan in financing in half a year, and miHoYo Strategic Investment is one of the investors that joined recently. Liu Hongjie, founder and CEO of the company, holds a doctorate in neurobionic engineering from ETH Zurich and started his business in Shenzhen in 2018.

(Liu Hongjie, Founder and CEO of 9Nano)

9Nano develops AI chips with integrated computing and storage. To put it simply, it brings computing and storage closer to reduce the time and consumption of data transmission back and forth. The company has previously achieved mass production and sales of its computing-storage integrated products, and is currently developing new solutions combining high-bandwidth flash memory, hoping to make large models run more efficiently.

A few days before the release of this news, miHoYo also appeared in the financing list of Mingxin Qirui. On October 19, Mingxin Qirui announced the completion of a Series A financing of over 400 million yuan, led by Boyuan Capital and followed by miHoYo and other institutions.

Mingxin Qirui was established in May 2024, and its team is derived from the team of Academician Liu Ming. This round of financing also brought a personnel update: Lu Tao, former President and General Manager of Greater China at Graphcore, joined the company as CEO and Co-Founder.

(Lu Tao, CEO and Co-Founder of Mingxin Qirui)

This company is promoting the industrialization of resistive random access memory (ReRAM) while launching the R&D of LPU, the first-generation large model inference chip. The so-called inference means that the trained model processes problems and gives answers. The two companies take different technical routes, but both are trying to improve the computing and storage efficiency during the operation of large models.

After sorting out public financing information, corporate documents and prospectuses, Game Digest found that since 2020, miHoYo has participated in the investment of at least 6 technology companies in the fields of AI, chips, cloud rendering and other related sectors. In addition to the two companies mentioned above, the list also includes VoxelCloud, Gravity, MiniMax and Starsea AI.

In early 2020, miHoYo participated in the Pre-A round financing of VoxelCloud, a real-time cloud rendering company, which also participated in the development of *Genshin Impact Cloud*; in 2023, miHoYo, as an existing shareholder, participated in the Series A financing of Gravity, a company that develops dedicated chips for devices such as AR glasses and VR headsets; miHoYo also invested in large model company MiniMax, as well as Starsea AI, which develops embodied intelligence models and robots.

At the same time, miHoYo is also expanding its AI R&D team. Its 2027 campus recruitment has listed R&D positions such as large model training system, inference system and inference platform, covering Beijing and Shanghai.

(Partial large model campus recruitment positions on miHoYo's official website)

For players, more direct changes have already appeared in games. From April to May this year, *Honkai: Star Rail* launched the "Pam Help (Beta)" feature, where players can ask about team composition strategies, how to farm materials, or chat freely with Pam, and all responses are AI-generated.

(Official illustration for the function description of "Pam Help (Beta)")

*Zephyr Valley* tries to make characters remember their interactions with players. During the "Connection Test" in September, players can choose to retain the memories with the AI character Nalo in the private "Wild Coffee" room, which will be continued in future versions.

How far is miHoYo willing to go for AI? Liu Wei (Da Wei Ge) gave a very straightforward answer at the campus recruitment presentation of Shanghai Jiao Tong University on September 23. He recalled that after Cai Haoyu decided to invest in large model R&D, he asked how much funding he could get. After checking the company's account and estimating the expected future revenue, he replied: "I can give you a maximum of 100 billion yuan."

Immediately after that, he added: "If we still can't make any achievements with this 100 billion yuan, we will both accept the result." Cai Haoyu responded that with this level of support, they can go all out.

At the same presentation, Liu Wei also mentioned that the large-scale software engineering experience he and Cai Haoyu accumulated in the past is the foundation of their confidence in developing large models. He made a clear judgment: in the next two to three years, miHoYo will become a "key player" among domestic large model teams.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Mobile Game Digest" (ID: sykong_com), written by a game-focused author, and authorized for release by 36Kr.