IQIYI

IQIYI
Information
Type	Subsidiary of Baidu
Industry	Online entertainment, Virtual Reality
Founded	January 6, 2010
Founder	Gong Yu
Headquarters	Beijing, China
Notable Personnel	Gong Yu (founder and CEO), Xiong Wen (CEO, iQIYI Intelligence)
Products	QIYU VR headsets, streaming video, offline VR experiences
Parent	Baidu
Website	https://www.iqiyi.com

iQIYI (Chinese: 爱奇艺; stylized iQIYI, formerly Qiyi), traded on NASDAQ as IQ, is a Chinese online entertainment company best known as one of the country's largest video streaming platforms, often described as the "Netflix of China." The company was founded on January 6, 2010 by Gong Yu, who remains its chief executive, and is majority owned by the search company Baidu. Beyond streaming, iQIYI is notable in the extended reality field for the QIYU line of standalone Virtual Reality headsets, developed by its in-house startup iQIYI Intelligence (also reported as iQIYI Smart).

iQIYI entered the VR market in 2016, building a hardware and content business around its QIYU brand that produced several generations of all-in-one headsets, including the Qiyu 3, the Qiyu Dream, the Qiyu Dream Pro and the Qiyu MIX. The VR unit, which operated as a separate legal entity from the streaming business, expanded aggressively during the metaverse boom of 2021 but ran into severe financial trouble in 2023 as that hype faded.

Company background

iQIYI was launched in 2010 under the name Qiyi with backing from the United States private equity firm Providence Equity Partners, and was renamed iQIYI in late 2011. In 2012 Baidu bought out Providence's stake to take control of the company, and Baidu has remained the majority shareholder since. The company went public on the NASDAQ stock exchange on March 29, 2018 under the ticker IQ, raising about 2.25 billion US dollars. Headquartered in Beijing, iQIYI runs a subscription video-on-demand service that produces and distributes films and television series, and the platform reports well over 500 million monthly active users.

VR business

iQIYI began developing VR products in 2016 through iQIYI Intelligence, an independently operated startup that it incubated in-house and led by chief executive Xiong Wen. The unit positioned QIYU as a premium standalone VR ecosystem combining hardware, gaming and iQIYI's large library of films and TV shows. By the company's own account it released four products in roughly five years and claimed several industry firsts, including what it described as China's first computer vision based head-and-hand 6DoF interaction technology.

During China's "Double 11" shopping festival in 2020, iQIYI said its QIYU headsets took the top sales position for VR all-in-one devices on JD.com, with a 71 percent year-on-year increase and three of the five best-selling models on the platform. The hardware push was paired with developer outreach: alongside the Qiyu 3 announcement in early 2021 the company launched a global developer recruitment effort it called the "Columbus" program.

iQIYI also built an offline VR business. In 2018 it established a production studio, later branded DREAMVERSE, and from 2020 it began curating location-based immersive experiences. One of these, a roughly 300 square meter walk-through recreation of ancient Luoyang shown in Shanghai in June 2023, drew more than 5,000 visitors and formed part of a planned "Chinese Historic City Universe" of themed VR zones.

QIYU headsets

The QIYU (Chinese: 奇遇) line consisted of standalone VR headsets that ran on Qualcomm mobile XR silicon and emphasized high-resolution displays and a large virtual cinema, drawing on iQIYI's video catalog. The lineup progressed from early all-in-one models on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chips to later flagships built on the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2.

Product	Year	Chipset	Notable specs and notes
Qiyu 1	circa 2017	Qualcomm Snapdragon 820	iQIYI's first all-in-one VR headset; built around a 4K ultra-high-definition screen
Qiyu 2 / Qiyu 2 Pro	2019-2020	Qualcomm Snapdragon 835	Qiyu 2 marketed as a 4K all-in-one headset supporting 8K panoramic video; the Qiyu 2 Pro launched in March 2020 with 6DoF head-and-hand interaction
Qiyu 3	2021	Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2	Announced January 13, 2021 and launched August 31, 2021 (on sale September 3 via JD.com and Tmall); dual fast LCDs at 2160x2160 per eye, 90 Hz, 8 GB DDR4 RAM; described as China's first CV head-hand 6DoF headset
Qiyu Dream (Adventure Dream)	2021	Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2	Unveiled December 1, 2021 at 1,999 yuan (about 314 US dollars); 8 GB RAM, 6DoF; controllers and tracking built on Nordic nRF52 wireless chips (an nRF52832 in the headset and nRF52833 in each controller)
Qiyu Dream Pro	2022	Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2	Standalone VR headset in the Dream family
Qiyu MIX	2023	Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2	Flagship using Micro-OLED displays and pancake folded optics; iQIYI cited a resolution increase of more than 50 percent over prior models

Funding and decline

iQIYI Intelligence raised a Series B round announced on January 5, 2021, led by Yitang Changhou Fund and Fresh Capital, which the company described as the largest single round in China's VR industry in 2020. A Series C round of 400 million yuan (about 56 million US dollars) was announced in January 2023. The Series C money was structured to be released in stages tied to performance targets, and because the company fell short of its sales goals it received only a fraction of the total, reportedly a few tens of millions of yuan.

The shortfall triggered a cash crisis. By August 2023 the VR unit, by then reported under the name Dream Bloom, had stopped fully paying staff, with some employees receiving no salary at all since March 2023. The business went through several rounds of layoffs that cut headcount below 100, with reductions reaching as much as 50 percent in some departments. More than 100 employees were affected by the unpaid wages. iQIYI chief executive Gong Yu publicly clarified that iQIYI Intelligence was a separate legal entity from the streaming company and said iQIYI was "making every effort to assist" the VR unit in raising funds. The collapse mirrored a wider pullback in China, where companies such as Tencent and ByteDance also cut back their metaverse and VR efforts as enthusiasm for the sector cooled.