Sanrio Acquires Metaverse Company Gugenka: IP Giant Fully Enters XR and Metaverse!

On July 28, 2025, global IP giant Sanrio dropped a bombshell: officially acquiring Gugenka, a company focused on XR (Extended Reality) and metaverse. This isn't just an ordinary business acquisition—it's more like a key strategic move in Sanrio's global IP platform chess game, taking a crucial step toward digital and metaverse deep integration.

Sanrio has always had an ambitious goal—"to become a lighthouse guiding everyone toward smiles," and is committed to bringing its IPs to every corner of the world. This acquisition of Gugenka is precisely what Sanrio sees as a "touchpoint" investment to realize this long-term vision. Through this union, Sanrio undoubtedly wants to make a big splash in the digital realm, especially in cutting-edge areas like XR and metaverse.

Speaking of Gugenka, this company founded in 2005 in Niigata City, Japan, is a veteran in the XR field. They specialize in VR, AR, MR, and other cutting-edge technology applications, particularly skilled at transforming anime IPs into various cool digital products, and conducting creative planning, production, and sales. In recent years, Gugenka has been making frequent appearances—for instance, they deeply participated in Sanrio's own "Sanrio Virtual Festival" virtual event production, accumulating rich experience in IP-XR integration and earning considerable industry praise.

Gugenka's star products are also highlights: the digital product sales platform "XMarket," the MR service "HoloModels" that lets you play with digital figurines, and "MakeAvatar" for easily creating custom virtual avatars. As of December 2024, Gugenka had 81 employees, a considerable scale. More notably, even after being acquired by Sanrio, Gugenka's CEO Masashi Mikami will continue to helm the company, and their collaborations with other company IPs and existing business will continue.

There's also a side story. Gugenka announced joining the STPR Group in March 2024, and STPR also acquired some of Gugenka's shares. Since its founding in 2018, the STPR Group has flourished in the entertainment field, from entertainment group operations to record companies, merchandise, concert planning, and studio business—quite a broad business landscape. As for how negotiations with the STPR Group proceeded during Sanrio's acquisition of Gugenka, official details haven't been disclosed yet.

Sanrio has high hopes for this acquisition. They hope to leverage Gugenka's technical capabilities to comprehensively enhance both parties' abilities in digital XR content production and sales, thereby further strengthening market competitiveness in the IP field. It's foreseeable that in the future, we may see more Sanrio characters appearing in brand new digital forms, even achieving online-to-offline (O2O) cross-selling, allowing fans to interact with their beloved IPs regardless of where they are.

Sanrio's strategic acquisition undoubtedly signals new trends in the IP industry in the digital age. Through deep integration with XR and metaverse technologies, Sanrio is working to weave a world of "smiles" full of imagination and more accessible for global fans. In the future, let's wait and see how Sanrio continues to write its legendary chapter in this emerging digital blue ocean.