About the studio
iQIYI was established April 22, 2010 (having launched in public beta that January as Qiyi.com), founded by Dr. Yu Gong with backing from Baidu and Providence Equity Partners, and renamed iQIYI in November 2011. Based in Beijing, China, it's one of the major Chinese streaming platforms licensing and airing Japanese anime, alongside a growing slate of original animation. *Sometimes called the Netflix of China, though that comparison undersells how much it's had to compete on the anime front specifically against bilibili and Tencent Video.* Baidu took full ownership in 2012, and iQIYI went public on the Nasdaq in March 2018, raising roughly $2.25 billion. Fifteen years since its founding, iQIYI has become one of the essential platforms for reaching Chinese anime audiences legally, part of a genuinely fierce three-way streaming competition that's reshaped how anime gets distributed across the region.