The card market has clearly cooled down compared to 2024, both in terms of trading volume and attention.
&#34;The public's consumer interest has been attracted by the vinyl and plush trends driven by Pop Mart, while the card industry lacks leading IPs with a driving effect, resulting in an overall decline in market heat,&#34; said Yang Tangtang, founder of Ka You Jiang Hu, to Xinfeng.
After the &#34;explosive traffic&#34; of Nezha gradually faded at the beginning of the year, the competitive narrative of domestic card games began to diversify.
Although the &#34;one strong and many strong&#34; pattern is difficult to shake, various capital has accelerated its entry.
In August, Flash Soul announced the completion of hundreds of millions of RMB in its first round of financing, led by Hillhouse Venture Capital, with Gao Rong Venture Capital and Cathay Capital participating, and Guangyuan Capital serving as the exclusive financial advisor.
This became the largest publicly disclosed financing amount in the card game sector in nearly a year.
Flash Soul was established in 2023. Although it has been less than two years since its founding, the team has a prominent background, co-founded by Yao Shuaobin, chairman of the listed company Yaoji Technology, and Sheng Chuan, former marketing director of Ka You.
Prior to this, Yaoji Technology was more known as a playing card manufacturer.
With the completion of Flash Soul's financing and the continuous synergy of the &#34;Yaoji system&#34; resources behind it, a systematic layout of the trendy toy ecosystem is gradually unfolding.
<h2>Dark Horse in the Card Circle</h2>
The rise of Flash Soul can be described as a &#34;dark horse&#34; in the card industry.
At the beginning of 2024, the company's collaboration with NetEase's &#34;Identity V&#34; quickly opened up the market upon its launch.
Within less than a month of the product going live, the online direct sales channel was sold out—this was only the second product launched since Flash Soul's establishment.
Due to the success of the card products based on this IP by leading company Ka You, Flash Soul was once referred to as &#34;Little Ka You&#34; in the industry.
However, significant differences in development paths and strategic positioning soon became apparent between the two.
Unlike Ka You, which focuses on younger IPs like Ultraman and My Little Pony, Flash Soul focuses on game-related IPs, forming a clear strategy of differentiated competition.
According to investors, products like &#34;Identity V,&#34; &#34;Genshin Impact - Seven Saints Summon,&#34; and &#34;Return to the Future: 1999&#34; series are phenomenon-level hits that will drive the company to achieve exponential growth between 2024 and 2025.
In terms of type, Flash Soul is clearly allocating more resources to the trading card game (TCG) sector, which focuses on collection, construction, and competition.
In August 2024, Flash Soul collaborated with Genshin Impact to launch the TCG series &#34;Genshin Impact - Seven Saints Summon.&#34;
A year later, Flash Soul partnered with Riot Games to launch the physical TCG &#34;Runeterra: League of Legends Battle Cards&#34; in mainland China.
This product is fully designed, developed, and produced by Flash Soul, which also provides systematic support to core stores, and will jointly invest over 100 million RMB annually with Riot Games for ongoing market promotion.
Compared to collectible cards (CCG) that heavily rely on native IP fans to drive sales and emphasize rarity, TCG places more emphasis on community interaction among players.
In mature overseas markets, TCG is a more mainstream gameplay, providing a certain degree of autonomy in maintaining customer groups.
Xie Ziqiang, a senior practitioner in the domestic TCG sector and head of the TCG card &#34;Goalkeeper,&#34; told Xinfeng: &#34;As long as TCG achieves a certain scale of shipments, the ROI performance is very good. Additionally, due to strong user stickiness, the market demand for products is easy to assess and can grow steadily
However, correspondingly, the entry threshold for TCG is higher, operational investment is greater, and the audience is smaller, which places higher demands on user payments.
Xie Ziqiang stated that although new TCG products continue to emerge in the domestic market, very few have truly achieved long-term healthy operations. The core issue lies in the insufficient reserve of professional talent and the lack of sustainable strategic planning and resource investment by some enterprises.
One of the advantages of Shanhun is its ability to gain synergy and resource support from its &#34;brother company&#34; under the same actual controlling entity—Yaoji Chaopin.
As the agent for Pokémon Trading Card Game and Disney Lorcana in China, Yaoji Chaopin possesses extensive card channel resources and a mature event operation system.
The official statement indicated that Yaoji Chaopin will serve as the sole card store channel partner for &#34;Runeterra,&#34; fully participating in store expansion, sales management, and event hosting.
<h2>Dissecting the &#34;Yaoji System&#34;</h2>
The Yaoji system has a deep and broad industrial layout in the card field, with influence penetrating multiple upstream and downstream links.
As early as 2022, Yaoji Technology entered the star card market through strategic equity investment.
This was achieved by holding 38.14% of the shares in Shanghai Ludao Sports Culture Development Co., Ltd., indirectly investing in star card issuer DAKA and the second-hand trading platform CardHobby.
DAKA focuses on the issuance and sales of star cards, covering fields such as football, basketball, and esports; CardHobby is a leading second-hand trading platform for star cards in China, with GMV exceeding 600 million yuan in 2021.
In the first half of 2025, Shanghai Ludao Sports Culture Development Co., Ltd. reported revenue of 105 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35%, and a net profit of 12 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 39%.
With Yaoji Chaopin, one of the mainstream TCG channels in China, the newly funded industry newcomer Shanhun, and its own printing supply chain resources, the influence of the Yaoji system in the card track cannot be underestimated.
However, Yaoji Chaopin and Shanhun no longer have direct ties to Yaoji Technology in terms of equity structure.
Yet, some connections can still be captured from historical evolution and personnel details.
Yaoji Chaopin was initially incubated by the listed company in September 2022.
Subsequently, in December of the same year, Chairman Yao Shuaobin and former Secretary of the Board Bian Dayun increased the company's capital through their respective controlling entities, raising the registered capital by 12 million yuan, which diluted the listed company's shareholding to 45%.
By the time of the 2023 mid-year report disclosure, the listed company still held 18% of its shares and classified it as an associated enterprise; at that time, Yaoji Chaopin was an early investor in the operating entity of Shanhun.
However, data from Tianyancha in November 2023 indicated that the listed company had exited the shareholder ranks of Yaoji Chaopin.
In the annual report of that year, Yaoji Technology confirmed that Chaopin had been divested from the listed company system and was only disclosed as an associated party controlled by the actual controller and serving as an executive.
The operating entity of Shanhun, &#34;Shanghai Zhenyouqu Cultural Creative Co., Ltd.,&#34; was disclosed as an associated company &#34;also controlled by the same actual controller&#34; in the 2025 semi-annual report.
In addition to being jointly controlled by Yao Shuaobin, many executives in external enterprises have also previously served as executives in the listed company.
For example, the former secretary of the board of directors of the listed company, Bian Dayun, serves as the legal representative of YAOJI CHAO PIN and a shareholder of ShanHun.
Jiangsu Xiuka Technology, a card supply chain enterprise with an annual production capacity of 1 billion cards controlled by ShanHun, has a shareholder, Song Xiuwen, who previously served as the deputy general manager of the listed company.
Some opinions suggest that the reason YAOJI adopts an external incubation model may include strategic isolation of risks and avoiding the impact of early losses on the financial statements of the listed company.
Although there is no obvious business overlap between internal and external operations, the blurred boundaries between the two may still weaken the independence of the listed company.
For instance, YAOJI CHAO PIN shares the &#34;YAOJI&#34; brand with the listed company, essentially borrowing the goodwill and brand endorsement of the listed company without compensation, making it difficult for the market to clearly distinguish between the listed entity and external operations.
Once external enterprises encounter operational or reputational risks, they may potentially transmit to the listed company.
In addition, it is believed that some senior employees of YAOJI TECHNOLOGY, besides their primary duties, also participate in the operation of some non-core businesses of ShanHun.
The overlap of such personnel and potential resource synergies increases the likelihood of related actions between the two, which may also pose certain challenges to the governance transparency of YAOJI TECHNOLOGY

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Hillhouse Capital leads the investment, YAOJI TECHNOLOGY supports: Can Flash Soul become the next "Card Game"?