China’s game engine Cocos raises $50M, goes beyond games

techcrunch.com:

Cocos Technologies, a China-based game engine provider that has been around since 2010, just announced it has picked up $50 million in a Series B funding round in a bid to work on development and move beyond games. Investors include CCB Trust, a subsidiary of China Construction Bank, GGV Capital, and real-time communication solution provider Agora, a long time partner of Cocos.

Cocos is best known for its cross-platform, open-source engine for 2D mobile games, but many have argued it has fallen behind in the 3D era. To play catchup, the Beijing-based company added 3D capabilities to its engine last year. The Chinese company is not aiming to take on behemoths like Unreal or Unity though; rather, it sets sight on an overlooked trend — the revival of HTML5 web games in China and elsewhere. It’s also making forays into non-game scenarios like online education and autonomous driving.

Cocos is free to use, so over the years, it has generated capital from a mix of sources, including providing support and tutorials to third-party developers, getting funding from its Chinese parent Chukong, and running gaming industry events.

It has a major deal with Huawei to let global developers build games that run on the phone maker’s in-house chips and HarmonyOS, billed as an alternative to Android. The company also supports Chinese search giant Baidu’s metaverse platform Xirang, though it declined to share how exactly they work together.

These revenue streams have been able to sustain Cocos, but the company is ready to accelerate growth, which is why it sought out outside financing. Its team grew from about 100 employees 18 months ago to over 230 as of this month, Luke Stapley, a marketing director at Cocos, told TechCrunch.

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