Gaming drives Vietnam tech unicorn VNG’s H1 revenue

Vietnamese tech unicorn VNG Corp (UPCoM: VNZ) reported net revenue of over VND4.8 trillion ($181.82 million) in H1, up 11% year-on-year, with gaming remaining its major contributor at VND3.59 trillion ($135.98 million).

VNG’s adjusted net profit from business operations reached VND435 billion ($16.48 million) amid major restructuring, the company stated on its website.

Of the total gaming bookings of VND3.59 trillion, VND656 billion ($24.85 million) came from international markets.

Many standout titles in the period, such as Lineage 2M through a joint venture with South Korea’s NCSOFT (1.3 million downloads in its first month in Southeast Asia), Forbidden Realm (Top 6 on Thailand’s App Store), and PUBG (7.9 million quarterly users in Vietnam, with revenue up 45% year-on-year), reflect VNG’s strong capabilities in developing and operating games both domestically and regionally.

VNG's ZaloPay e-wallet saw strong growth in H1, with total payment volume (TPV) rising 63% year-on-year. Payments via multi-function QR code - ZaloPay’s strategic product - jumped fivefold compared to H1/2024.

The app now supports all QR standards in Vietnam, including bank QR codes, e-wallet QR codes, and VNPay-QR, while also expanding international payment capabilities across multiple Asian countries.

In H1, Zalo, VNG’s flagship messaging app, maintained its position as Vietnam’s leading communication platform, with 78.3 million monthly active users and over 2 billion messages sent daily.

The app continued to expand its AI integration, attracting more than 20 million regular users through features that enhance communication, entertainment, and productivity.

The number of users subscribing to value-added services surged 168% year-on-year, reinforcing Zalo’s strategy to build sustainable revenue through premium offerings.

In addition, Zalo has completed deep-link integration with 25 banks -covering 96% of the market - enabling users to make seamless transfers directly from the chat interface to banking apps.

VNG’s emerging business unit - GreenNode that specializes in AI infrastructure and AI product innovation - continued to make strides.

Recently, its GreenMind-Medium-14B-R1 model became the first Vietnamese large language model (LLM) deployed on the NVIDIA AI NIM platform, optimized to run on a single H100 GPU.

This achievement underscores GreenNode’s capability to develop models from scratch to international standards, opening opportunities to bring Vietnamese AI into practical commercial applications.

VNG’s H1 financial results reflect its efforts to tighten operations, control costs, and drive revenue from core products.

With tax contributions of VND1.59 trillion ($60.23 million) in 2024, VNG ranked 29th among the top 100 private companies contributing to the state budget. This marked the third consecutive year the group had contributed more than VND1 trillion ($37.88 million).

VNG continued to uphold high standards of sustainable development, securing a spot in the 2025 Fortune Southeast Asia 500 announced by the U.S.-based Fortune magazine.

It also received the “Great Place to Work” certification. According to Great Place to Work, a global authority on workplace culture, 89% of VNG employees say it is a great place to work, compared with 59% at a typical global company.