As AI is silently integrated into all kinds of consumer electronics, clothing, food, lodging, and travel, NetDragon has also achieved a multi-angle and all-round layout on the AI racetrack.
On December 18, 2024, ByteDance released the Doubao visual understanding model at the “Volcano Engine FORCE Power Conference”, which instantly ignited the enthusiasm and imagination of the capital market for AI smart glasses. The A-share market was moved by the news. All listed companies involved in the AI glasses industry chain experienced a spectacular upward trend after the Byte press conference.
Meanwhile, ROKID, a leading domestic AI eyewear company, recently had a big splash at the US International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Its core product, ROKID Glasses, was widely praised by international exhibitors at the exhibition site, and also received a major award for Best of CES 2025.
ROKID is currently not listed, so I'm afraid ordinary investors won't be able to share the tech company's rapid growth in a timely manner. However, I discovered through a press release from the Hong Kong stock listed company NetDragon (00777) that investors are eager to invest in ROKID, and there is no shortage of “curve investment” methods.
According to a previous NetDragon press release, NetDragon invested 20 million US dollars in the ROKID strategy in November 2023, and the two sides also signed a five-year strategic cooperation agreement. This means that NetDragon is a strategic investor in ROKID, so it has sufficient momentum to enjoy this wave of AI set off in the capital market.
ROKID became popular at CES, and NetDragon's AI layout was further strengthened
From January 7 to January 11, 2025, ROKID appeared at the CES 2025 exhibition, bringing many AR products including the integrated AI+AR glasses Rokid Glasses and the Rokid AR Lite overseas edition, showing the global technology community the strength of China's AR technology and the unlimited potential of the AR industry.
Among them, Rokid Glasses, which will be officially released in the second quarter of this year, is one of the highlights of this CES. According to reports, Rokid Glasses uses an integrated design and is equipped with a 12 million pixel high-resolution camera under an overall weight of 49g. The lens has a display function, and can identify things, solve problems, and even estimate the calories of fried chicken based on the Universal Thousand Questions model, making it ideal for everyday use. Many tech media and exhibitors tried this product on site and found that it can easily implement real-time conversation translation, real-time speech-to-text conversion, real-time keyword search, and question and answer analysis of large language models.
With its powerful “AI+AR” function, this new product has quickly become popular in the international technology and consumer electronics circles, which in turn has prompted ROKID to enter the eyes of many international media.
I have to say that Rokid Glasses' “AI+AR” glasses can explode in the market and are also in line with the current development trend of AI smart glasses.
Xu Tao, co-chief analyst of the technology industry at CITIC Securities, said that AI smart glasses are the closest device to human visual perception. With the support of visual understanding models, AI glasses have sensing capabilities, which help to thoroughly understand user intentions and provide more accurate and relevant intelligent services. Therefore, they are fully optimistic that the application of visual understanding models will drive demand for AI glasses chips and storage. Guojin Securities pointed out in the research report that the AI model has brought new development opportunities to consumer electronics and IOT hardware, and will continue to drive hardware innovation, increase the value of the industrial chain, and speed up the switching cycle. AI smart glasses are in full bloom and are expected to usher in explosive growth.
In response, senior NetDragon officials also stated that they will strengthen cooperation with ROKID, use cutting-edge technology to design products with a new user experience, and accelerate their launch. The plan will enable NetDragon to open up a new racetrack for AI glasses and related software and content products in addition to its traditional online games and educational technology, opening up a broad space for imagination for its performance growth.
All-round layout of AI to open up growth curves in multiple dimensions
As AI is silently integrated into all kinds of consumer electronics, clothing, food, lodging, and travel, NetDragon has also achieved a multi-angle and all-round layout on the AI racetrack.
As early as the 2023 interim results report, NetDragon's management announced that the Taiwan Art Pipeline has fully implemented generative AI technology. Relying on game art resources accumulated over many years, it has trained customized AI models for different project needs, covering various aspects from original character drawings and scene drawings to UI.
In November 2023, company executives also held a special press conference to describe the strategic vision of AI+ education: “The company believes that AI+ education will definitely be the direction NetDragon will invest in in the future, and it will also be a profitable growth point for the overseas education business. No matter what company, the development of hardware is limited, and we are working on an overall digital education solution, which is why AI is so important to us.”
NetDragon believes that adding AI to its flagship brand, Promethean (Promethean), is equivalent to a SaaS model, and can also teach according to abilities. According to information, Prometheus launched a new SaaS product in January 2024, which has been highly recognized by users in the European and American education technology market, and is expected to be further integrated into AI technology in the future.
At the same time, the company is also actively developing an exclusive model for education: “For the company's business in different countries, it is important to localize education. Every country has different laws, politics, culture, and religion, and can use the same technology platform, but it needs to have its own vertical model.”
So far, NetDragon's two main businesses — online games and education technology — have all been deeply integrated into generative AI technology. In addition, the company is also actively investing in some cutting-edge manufacturers in the AI hardware field to seize excessive growth and rare opportunities for strategic cooperation, and is likely to open up a new growth curve for related products.
Forward-looking strategic investment, when the company's revaluation is in progress
It is worth mentioning that investors who are familiar with investing in Hong Kong stocks are usually no stranger to NetDragon's investment record.
As early as ten years ago, NetDragon proactively laid out the key growth trend of the previous era — mobile internet. It successfully incubated the famous mobile application distribution platform 91 Wireless, and transferred its strategy to Baidu. After receiving $1.9 billion in cash, NetDragon also generously shared it with a wide range of shareholders — at the end of October 2013, it paid a special dividend of HK$7.77 per share.
Since then, NetDragon has also successfully used the huge amount of capital from this major industrial investment to further invest in the education technology industry and receive rich returns. At the end of 2023, NetDragon once again distributed a special dividend to shareholders to share and celebrate the successful spin-off and listing of its overseas education technology subsidiary Mynd.ai in the US.
Judging from ROKID's recent “popularity”, along with the widespread rise of the AI boom in the capital market, NetDragon's investment in the cutting-edge field of AI is about to bear fruit once again.
Therefore, as a rare “pure AI stock” in the Hong Kong stock market, NetDragon has unlimited room for imagination in the future, and currently the company's valuation is extremely low. The market capitalization is only HK$5 billion, and the regular dividend ratio has reached 8.5%. In addition to high growth expectations, there is enough safety cushion for investors to pay attention to.
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