Papergames has established an investment fund with a size of over 100 million yuan.

Recently, a new move of PapeGames has come to light.

According to Qichacha, on September 16, Shanghai PapeGames Technology newly entered "Nanjing Borui Digital Intelligence No.1 Venture Capital Partnership Enterprise", with a subscribed capital contribution of 100.96 million yuan, accounting for 99.9604% of the total proportion. In the same period, the subscribed scale of the partnership also increased from 30 million yuan to 101 million yuan, with Guangzhou Borui Venture Capital Co., Ltd. acting as the executing partner.

To put it simply, this forms a structure where "PapeGames provides the majority of capital, and professional investment institutions are responsible for specific operations".

Of course, investment is nothing new for PapeGames. Long before, PapeGames had successively invested in enterprises including Moliang Technology, the developer of "Rumor Detective", X.D. Network, Yuelongyin, the developer of "Huo Huan", and Huying Technology in the interactive film and television field. Its investment scope has extended from game R&D to interactive content, comics, IP derivatives and other sectors. In addition, PapeGames has also participated in external venture capital funds as a capital contributor in the past.

However, compared with most of its previous investment methods, the relationship between PapeGames and investment institutions this time is much deeper: it has changed from a participant to the core capital provider of this venture capital vehicle.

This means that PapeGames may be preparing a more fixed and independent capital outlet for its investment business.

If we look further back in time, this move happens to take place at the stage when PapeGames is further exploring new technologies and new businesses in the AI field.

Relatively specific technical attempts have emerged in its game products. In a batch of neural graphics cooperation projects recently announced by Arm, "Infinity Nikki" is advancing the integration of Neural Super Sampling (NSS), hoping to use neural networks to participate in mobile terminal graphics rendering.

At the same time, PapeGames has also released more AI-related signals outside the game sector. In previous recruitment, industrial design positions for "AI companion products" have been posted; by the end of August, Shanghai PapeGames Interactive Entertainment also adjusted its business scope, adding new businesses including basic artificial intelligence software development, artificial intelligence theory and algorithm software development, artificial intelligence application software development and AI hardware sales.

This also leaves more room for imagination for PapeGames' latest investment move. After all, looking at the entire game industry, AI and investment are appearing in the same topic more and more frequently.

The reason is not hard to understand. This round of AI wave covers a wide range of technical directions, from basic capabilities such as large models, to application forms such as Agents, and then to technical directions directly related to game R&D such as neural graphics and 3D content generation. Different directions usually correspond to different technical teams and companies.

For game manufacturers, not all capabilities can be built from scratch through internal transformation. Accessing external teams and technologies through external investment has gradually become a more realistic supplementary approach.

This is also related to the practical problem of how to continuously expand new capabilities as PapeGames' product and technology routes become more diversified.

In the past few years, PapeGames has expanded its business boundary mainly by extending its independent R&D capabilities. From early female-oriented dress-up and dating mobile games, to the highly immersive 3D dating experience of "Love and Deep Space", and then to the multi-platform open world game "Infinity Nikki" developed with UE5, PapeGames has been pushing its products and R&D capabilities to new categories and technical boundaries.

To a certain extent, this is a typical route of "R&D capabilities are upgraded along with the direction of products". After finalizing a new product type, PapeGames will supplement the corresponding capabilities through team expansion and technical R&D. However, as product forms and technologies become more and more complex, the cost and difficulty of relying solely on its own R&D system to meet these demands will continue to rise.

Now, combined with PapeGames' recent focus on AI-related technologies, investment may be becoming another starting point for PapeGames to extend its business outward. This may also give PapeGames an additional option to connect with external teams and capabilities besides internal R&D when facing new product and technology opportunities.

At present, Nanjing Borui Digital Intelligence No.1 has not shown specific external investment projects, so it is still difficult to infer which sectors the investment entity will finally focus on.

But at least judging from recent moves, PapeGames is still expanding its product forms and technical radius on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is starting to provide more space for its investment business. Next, how this new investment entity will integrate into PapeGames' existing game, technology and new business territory is worthy of our continued observation.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Shouyou Na Dian Shi" (ID: sykong_com), the author is Xian Wen, and it is published with authorization from 36Kr.