Nansha district in Guangzhou, a hub for emerging industries including high-end manufacturing, aerospace and marine technologies, health industries and integrated circuits, has set its sights on the metaverse. The immersive version of the internet, accessed via virtual-reality headsets, augmented reality glasses or other devices, is considered by some to represent the internet brought to life. “With the building of a perfect digital ecology, Nansha has laid a solid foundation for the development of the metaverse industry in the near future,” said Liu Quanbao, an official with the Guangzhou Science and Technology Bureau. The district has an artificial intelligence industrial park set up in the Qingsheng area that has attracted more than 300 AI enterprises.
Three Nansha-based companies – Cloudwalk Technology, Aofei Data and Pony.ai – were listed among the top 200 Chinese metaverse companies with the greatest potential, each with a market value of more than USD1 billion. Enterprises based in the district, including Deepmirror, SequoiaDB and Cross Stars, made the list of “future metaverse stars”, according to the Hurun Report. “The cutting-edge field of the metaverse is the next important development direction for the internet industry, which will profoundly change production and lifestyle in the future, and promote future industrial development,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, Chairman and Chief Researcher of the Hurun Report. The Guangzhou Metaverse Innovation Alliance, which was inaugurated in Nansha in March, is expected to help inject new vitality into Guangzhou’s construction of a global digital economy benchmark and an international consumer-oriented city, according to Hoogewerf.
“With the release of the list of metaverse companies with the greatest potential, it is expected that more businesses in the metaverse industry will move to the district and develop there,” he said. “Media and entertainment companies are at the forefront of the metaverse, using existing technologies to explore the application possibilities of the industry,” he said. People who utilize the metaverse are expected to reach five billion by 2030 worldwide, and the potential market size of the metaverse economy is likely to hit USD10 trillion, according to a recent Citibank report, as reported by the China Daily.
