This year, the highly recognizable Chinese潮玩IP“拉布布(LABUBU)” has rapidly gained popularity overseas, driving relevant listed companies' stock prices to new highs and keeping IP economy concept stocks in continuous market focus. LABUBU's overseas success is not accidental. In recent years, the global IP economy has shown strong growth momentum, gradually becoming an important engine for economic development. IP licensing has formed a vast and continuously expanding market, breaking through traditional consumption boundaries, stimulating diverse consumer demands, and injecting new vitality into the global consumer market. According to data from the International Licensing Industry Association, the global market size for IP licensed products and services reached $356.5 billion in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 5.0%. Similarly, China's IP market has performed impressively, with the licensing scale expected to exceed 168.9 billion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 40%, climbing to become the fourth-largest IP licensing market globally. Behind this growth are multiple favorable policy and market drivers: the national intellectual property strategy has established a systematic foundation for the industry’s healthy development, the expanding middle-income group continues to release consumption potential, and the Generation Z's emotional recognition and enthusiastic participation in IP further drive the shift of IP from a cultural symbol to a consumer asset.
With the market expansion, emerging technologies such as blockchain also offer innovative solutions to long-standing pain points in the IP licensing field, such as difficulty in establishing rights, tracing, and revenue sharing transparency. This is gradually building a more credible and efficient value circulation system. In this context, Virtual Mind (01520) proactively develops a “Smart Consumption + Smart Manufacturing” dual-drive strategy: on one hand, it deeply cultivates the IP value ecosystem through artificial intelligence, digitalization, and blockchain technology, expanding incremental space for existing businesses; on the other hand, it extends its operations into the industrial sector, utilizing cutting-edge technology to aid the intelligent upgrade and globalization of the manufacturing industry. This strategy not only resonates with the deep integration of the digital economy and real economy trends of the era but also opens up broader long-term growth pathways for the company.
Smart Consumption: Exploring New Blue Oceans in IP Digital Assets In the field of smart consumption, Virtual Mind relies on its existing IP resources, focusing on three major business segments: IP digitalization, IP product transactions, and IP community operations, gradually building a globally covered digital asset IP chain identity, providing full-chain services for cultural creativity,潮玩, digital artworks, etc., ensuring rights, traceability, and value empowerment. In the IP digitalization phase, the company plays the role of “IP investment bank,” transforming physical IP products into verifiable and tradable digital assets. Specifically, each physical IP collectible will be bound with a unique digital identifier, recorded on the chain to realize “one item, one code, clear ownership.” At the same time, leveraging artificial intelligence technology, the company can create more authentic interactive narratives and gamified experiences using IP, generating participatory and derivative dynamic digital content.
In the IP product transaction phase, the company collaborates directly with licensed IP parties to ensure that each IP artwork is an official genuine product; the introduction of smart contracts makes transaction settlements more transparent, and copyright sharing more immediate, effectively ensuring that creators continue to benefit from the secondary market. Cross-chain transaction technology further broadens the circulation scope of IP products, enhancing the global liquidity of IP assets. Finally, in the IP community operation segment, Virtual Mind constructs a highly interactive fan community through member loyalty programs and co-creation activities, effectively enhancing user stickiness and long-term brand value. Fans can participate in co-creation through online platforms like Club App, while offline entities and pop-up spaces extend virtual narratives into real-life settings, creating seamless connections between digital collections and physical experiences. Throughout this process, AI data analytics continuously optimizes interaction strategies, making each engagement more precise and engaging.
For instance, in a sports IP project in collaboration with Xizuchain Technology, both parties will jointly launch co-branded apparel, collectible figurines, player cards, and other derivative products of well-known sports IPs, while relying on Web3 and AI technologies to develop virtual rights and digital experiences, such as releasing exclusive digital content, setting up interactive voting and rights systems, and developing AR tour features. Concurrently, all digital collectibles support global compliant resale, allowing copyright holders to continuously share secondary market revenue through smart contracts, truly achieving long-term symbiosis of IP value.
Smart Manufacturing: Supporting Industrial Upgrading and Global Layout As another aspect of the “dual-drive” strategy, Virtual Mind’s smart manufacturing business is extending the company’s consumer-level IP operations into broader industrial scenarios by aiding Chinese companies in connecting with the global smart industry and promoting the intelligent transformation and upgrading of traditional manufacturing, opening the second growth curve. In September 2025, the company reached a strategic cooperation with iFlytek and the Saudi Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, marking a significant milestone in this strategic layout. According to the agreement, Virtual Mind will integrate leading domestic robotics and automation industry resources to provide Saudi Arabia with an overall solution from technology introduction and automation transformation to industrial ecosystem construction. This includes co-building a smart robotics training ground with iFlytek, creating an artificial intelligence industry platform, exploring robotic super brain technology application scenarios, and promoting AI + smart industry application scenarios. While empowering industrial upgrades, the company also plans to help Saudi Arabia creatively explore RWA (real-world asset) financing models, providing sustainable funding solutions for major projects such as smart factories and smart manufacturing bases.
In the future, both parties plan to deepen cooperation in the field of industrial city infrastructure, jointly constructing a globally-oriented “smart manufacturing super complex.” This series of layouts aligns closely with Saudi Arabia’s “Vision 2030”: Recently, the Saudi government formally reiterated its industrial development strategy, proposing a goal to increase the manufacturing sector's contribution to GDP from the current approximately 13% to 20% by 2030. Additionally, the Saudi Public Investment Fund has identified advanced manufacturing and digital infrastructure as key investment areas, fully promoting the deep integration of local industrial chains with artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and other technologies. By extending digital technology capabilities from consumer scenarios to the manufacturing field, Virtual Mind is steadily advancing its business layout in this new track of smart manufacturing and opening up broader development spaces for the future.
Coordinated "Dual-Drive" Strategic Synergy Drives Long-Term Development The successful practice of smart consumption business has laid a solid foundation for the company to extend to the industrial end. The accumulated blockchain rights establishment, digital IP transaction, and community operation capabilities at the consumption end are gradually transforming into competitive advantages in the industrial sector: On one hand, the technology architecture based on IP digitalization can directly apply to industrial intellectual property protection and management; on the other hand, smart contract and cross-border settlement systems provide mature technological solutions for cross-border cooperation in the manufacturing industry. Moreover, Virtual Mind’s distinctive Veye authentication system seamlessly combines customer identity verification (KYC) with decentralized identity (DID), ensuring the authenticity, compliance, and credibility of on-chain identities in both Web2 and Web3 environments. Through promoting the deep integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain, it constructs intelligent, data-driven infrastructures that can enhance automation levels, fraud detection capabilities, and personalized user experiences in real-time. Currently, the company boasts a powerful world-class team, with 100% of the technical team members coming from the top 20 universities in QS World University Rankings, all possessing master's degrees or higher and holding deep expertise in blockchain, artificial intelligence, and compliance fields.
Under the “Smart Consumption + Smart Manufacturing” dual-drive strategy, Virtual Mind has established a differentiated competitive advantage distinct from singular track companies. Looking ahead, the company is expected to continuously capture structural growth opportunities amid the dual trends of IP digitization and the intelligent transformation of the global manufacturing industry, achieving dual improvements in performance and valuation.