Hillhouse Capital has invested in the most expensive trendy collectible toy in 2025.

Recently, the new-generation card battle and IP cultural and creative brand "Flash Soul" announced the completion of its first-round financing of hundreds of millions of yuan. This round was led by Hillhouse Capital Ventures, with follow-on investments from Banyan Capital Ventures and Cathay Capital. This financing has also become the largest one in the industry since the continued boom in the trendy toy IP and anime merchandise markets this year.

Flash Soul has a similar business strategy to the currently very popular "Card Game". It mainly operates trading card games (TCG) that combine the attributes of collection, social interaction, and competition. Currently, the well-known IPs that Flash Soul has cooperated with include "Identity V", "Genshin Impact", "Return to the Past: 1999", "Runeterra: League of Legends Card Game", "Peppa Pig", etc. The cooperating manufacturers cover leading domestic game companies such as Tencent, NetEase, and Mihoyo.

According to Hillhouse Capital Ventures, with the support of well-known game IPs, Flash Soul will achieve "exponential growth" from 2024 to 2025.

Former Senior Executive of Card Game Joins Hands with the Second-Generation Entrepreneur from Chaoshan

It is reported that Sheng Chuan, the founder of Flash Soul, met Yao Shuobin, the chairman of Yaoji Technology, at an industry forum. After their conversation, they found that their understandings and prospects for the Chinese card industry were very similar, and the "seed" for starting a business together was thus sown.

At the beginning of 2023, not long after Sheng Chuan left his position as the marketing director of Card Game, he founded a new company - Shanghai Zhenyouqu Culture and Technology Co., Ltd., and established the card operation brand "Flash Soul". Zhu Yulin, the person in charge of Luming Technology, an advertising and marketing subsidiary of Yaoji Technology, invested 4.5 million yuan and became a co-founder of the new company.

While stepping down from the positions of the heads of several subsidiaries of Card Game, Sheng Chuan began to build the R & D, design, and sales teams for "Flash Soul" cards according to his own ideas. Relying on his nearly 20 years of experience in the card industry and IP operation, Sheng Chuan started to contact leading domestic game IP manufacturers to seek cooperation.

Half a year later, in August 2023, Yao Shuobin officially joined, and his Shanghai Yaoji Trendy Toy Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yaoji Trendy Toys") took a stake in Flash Soul.

As the largest partner of "Flash Soul", Yao Shuobin's joining not only brought new funds, domestic TCG operation and channel construction experience, but also a strong supply chain guarantee. Jiangsu Xiuka Technology Co., Ltd., which used to be under Yaoji Trendy Toys and had an annual production of one billion cards, has now been transferred to Flash Soul.

Yao Shuobin, who is generous in card investment, is the chairman of the listed company Yaoji Technology and also a second-generation entrepreneur. His father, Yao Wenchen, invested all his savings in 1991 to establish a playing card factory, successively introduced advanced production lines, continuously expanded sales, and enhanced the quality of the cards. Starting from the printing industry, Yao Wenchen has developed "Yaoji Playing Cards" into one of the top 100 enterprises in the Chinese printing industry and one of the top 100 private enterprises in Shanghai. Currently, the company also has multiple large-scale modern printing factories across the country and is the largest playing card manufacturer in China.

With the 80s second-generation entrepreneur Yao Shuobin officially taking over the listed company, Yaoji Technology has started to move from the playing card and printing industries to the large-scale entertainment industry, actively investing in fields such as games, trendy toys, and marketing. Before participating in the investment in Flash Soul, Yao Shuobin also invested in the largest domestic second-hand card trading platform "Card Hobby" and promoted Yaoji Trendy Toys to obtain the exclusive agency right for the simplified Chinese version of the Pokémon Trading Card Game (PTCG) in the Chinese mainland.

At the end of 2023, Flash Soul officially launched its first card product, the "British Library - Book Collection Series - Fantasy Childhood Dream Collectible Cards". Compared with the highly successful Card Game British Museum series of collectible cards in 2023, although the new Flash Soul cards had a more delicate packaging design, they did not cause much of a stir.

Sheng Chuan didn't have to wait long for Flash Soul's first "blockbuster". In January 2024, the "Carved Time" series of collectible cards jointly developed by Flash Soul and NetEase's popular game "Identity V" were officially released. Less than a month after the product was launched, the online direct sales channel was sold out, which brought popularity to Flash Soul.

In August 2024, Genshin Impact officially announced its cooperation with Flash Soul on their first TCG series, "The Seven-Star Summoning", which was officially released in November. The sales of tens of thousands of card packs and over 9,000 supplementary card packs once again made Flash Soul stand out and it was once hailed as the "Mini Card Game" by the outside world.

Beyond the domestic market, Flash Soul has even greater ambitions. According to Sheng Chuan, after obtaining the financing, the company will invest more resources to establish deeper and more long-term strategic cooperation relationships with top global IPs. It will build a global network, accelerate the establishment of overseas teams and localize operations, and establish direct sales or in - depth cooperation channels covering core markets such as North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia.

Investing Hundreds of Millions from the Start! Why Did Hillhouse, Banyan Capital, and Cathay Capital Make the Investment?

In recent years, cards, trendy toy blind boxes, and anime merchandise have been selling well driven by well-known film, television, and game IPs such as "Ne Zha 2" and "Genshin Impact". Pop Mart and Bruk have both seen significant increases in their stock prices because of this. However, investments in trendy toy, card, and cultural and creative operators in the primary market have been very cold.

Since 2025, there have only been 3 publicly disclosed investment and financing events in the trendy toy and cultural and creative fields. They are the acquisition of the trendy toy blind box brand "Letsvan" by Quantum Song, the nearly 100 million yuan Series C investment in the trendy toy sales company Yuanqi Mart, and the current investment in Flash Soul.

In the financing announcement, the person in charge of the Hillhouse Capital Ventures project said that they believe that TCG, as a golden track, has great development potential, and Flash Soul will become an important platform connecting top global IPs with users. Through innovative interaction forms, it can achieve in - depth companionship and create sustainable business value.

According to a research report from Guosheng Securities, as of 2024, the global TCG industry scale has exceeded 100 billion yuan. After years of cultivation by domestic card manufacturers and foreign card agents, China has surpassed the TCG markets of Japan and the United States and become the world's largest TCG battle and consumption market, with an industry scale of 26.3 billion yuan.

However, this market scale is mainly supported by trading cards such as Ultraman and My Little Pony under Card Game, forming a situation where Card Game "dominates" with card collection as the main focus and battle gameplay as a secondary one. Even though the Pokémon cards, under the operation of Yaoji Trendy Toys, have opened hundreds of large - scale offline battle venues, hundreds of experience stores, and card sales shops across the country and have entered a large number of convenience store sales channels, their promotion is still slow and it is difficult for them to stand out.

Besides the venue restrictions, the complex gameplay and large amount of calculation of "The Seven - Star Summoning" jointly developed by Flash Soul and "Genshin Impact" also make it difficult to get started. It is difficult to promote it among adult players, not to mention the currently more mainstream adolescent card - consuming group. After the initial sales boom, many of the relevant battle decks and cards of "The Seven - Star Summoning" have become collectible cards. It is difficult to form an offline game social circle, the performance of the second - hand trading market is mediocre, and consumers' willingness to repurchase and draw new cards is not strong.

However, this has not made Flash Soul give up TCG operations. In August 2025, Flash Soul jointly launched "Runeterra: League of Legends Card Game" with Riot Games under Tencent. At the same time, it will also hold a national tour of card tournaments to try to explore the domestic TCG market again.

Just looking at the domestic market, even the leading player, Card Game, is facing a lot of pressure. While its cards are selling well, since the card sales IP is mainly targeted at children and adolescents, the overly prosperous card - drawing and card - based social sharing have brought the labels of "young - age orientation" and "children's toys", which have made it very difficult for Card Game to go public and raise funds.

On the other hand, if a brand can successfully break through the "young - age trap", gather a large number of adult consumer groups with new IPs and new gameplay, and build a mature and complete operation chain, it will drive the transformation of relevant domestic consumption towards the Japanese and European - American models.

As one of the few design, production, and operation manufacturers in the domestic TCG operation track, can Flash Soul take on this important task? It remains to be verified by the market and more players.

It still takes time to cultivate the domestic market, and going global may be a better choice. It is reported that in October 2025, the English version of this series of cards will be released globally overseas, making the first attempt to enter the more mature European and American TCG markets.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Venture Capital Daily". Author: Liang Youyun. Republished by 36Kr with permission.