Alibaba Group Holding has set up a new gaming unit in Beijing to explore the potential of games in metaverse, which came a month after the Chinese e-commerce giant launch a “Metaverse Art Exhibition” for the annual Singles’ Day shopping festival.

The name of the new unit called “Yuanjing Shengsheng “reflect Alibaba’s intention to metaverse because “Yuanjing” means closely to metaverse or “元宇宙” in Chinese.

Yuanjing is a combination of two Chinese words “元 and境” or “Yuan and Jing “ in Pinyin, Yuan means “origin” and Jing means “universe or level” in English.

Locate at Beijing Econmic-Technological Development Area commonly known as Beijing’s Yizhuang new town, Yuanjing Shengsheng’s is wholly owned subsidiary of Alibaba’s venture capital arm-Ali Venture Capital Co., Ltd, according to Chinese corporate data and information platform Tianyancha.

The firm is described as a software development and service firm that focus on cloud gaming and offer computational resources and necessary tools to medium-sized developers.

“Our business is related to Metaverse,” a Yuanjing Shengsheng spokesperson said, without giving further explanation.

Chinese big tech firm followed the footsteps of Meta to make big bet on Metaverse by filing trademarks and investing in metaverse-related technologies despite potential regulatory challenges in China. In September, Chinese state media Securities Times warn in a commentary piece that investors should not blindly invest in an illusionary concept like metaverse.

Last week, the People’s Daily warned investors who engage in virtual property sales, saying investors should aware of risks of volatility, illegal fundraising and money laundering with such investment. The article also noted that digital assets transaction is not supported by laws in China and authorities have not yet provide clarity on land NFT sales.

Tencent Holdings, which runs the world's largest video gaming business by revenue and China's largest messaging app WeChat, got an early entry into space after becoming the China distributor of metaverse sandbox game Roblox in 2019. In September, It filed nearly 100 metaverse-related trademarks including “QQ Metaverse”, “QQ Music Metaverse” and “Kings Metaverse”.

Alibaba has also filed trademarks like Ali Metaverse”, “Taobao Metaverse” and “DingDing Metaverse”. In addition, it has partnered with domestic and international big brands such as Burberry to release “Metaverse Art Exhibition” for the annual Singles’ Day shopping festival.

For promotion of Singles Day, Burberry will be launching 1000 limited units of the deer mascot NFT with a limited-edition priced at RMB2900 (USD454). Upon purchase, buyers of the NFT can assess their NFT collection within Alipay mini program.

Tiktok owner ByteDance, has taken steps into the sector with the acquisition of VR device start-up Pico Interactive for CNY9 billion (roughly USD140 million) in August, four months after investing around CNY100 million (USD15.6million) into Mycodeview, the company behind gaming platform Reworld, a Chinese competitor to Roblox.

Last week, Baidu has launched its first metaverse product called the Land of Hope, a virtual 3D space which will serve as the online interaction hub for Baidu’s own artificial intelligence (AI) developers’ conference later this year.