For the second time ever, the Hurun Research Institute released its ranking of the 200 companies from the Greater China region with the most potential in the metaverse. The metaverse is an immersive, 3D online world that users access via a combination of physical and digital modes.
Alibaba and Huawei topped the list, with NetEase, Tencent, and Baidu close behind in the top 5. Huawei is a key partner in several industry alliances aiming to support metaverse development through greater cooperation, most recently joining Xiaomi in signing on to one spearheaded by China Mobile. Meanwhile, Alibaba is partnering with blockchain provider Avalanche to launch Cloudverse, a launchpad for businesses to customize and maintain their own metaverse spaces on the blockchain.
Among the companies listed by Hurun, which all have an enterprise value of more than 1 billion USD, 16% are state-owned enterprises and 84% are private enterprises. The vast majority (170) are publicly listed, whilst the remainder, including Huawei and ByteDance, are unlisted. Compared to last year, a greater proportion of enterprises in underlying technologies, ecological applications, and terminal industries made the list, as opposed to platform and network technology companies which were represented in greater numbers last year.
At the announcement event held in Nansha in Guangzhou, Hurun representatives shared insights that emerged through their evaluation of companies’ metaverse potential. According to their observations, more companies are focussing on the long-term development of the metaverse field at the industry level, rather than simply jumping on the metaverse buzzword at the marketing level.
Hurun also highlighted host city Nansha’s strong position in the field, which has been spurred by several recent local government initiatives, including an annual investment of 100 million RMB (13.9 million USD) toward research in metaverse technologies and the establishment of the Guangzhou Metaverse Innovative Industries Association.
