Sony Group subsidiaries Aniplex and Crunchyroll have teamed up to establish a new anime production joint-venture called Hayate. 

Led by Aniplex chairman/CEO Masanori Miyake and COO Leo Watanabe, this new Tokyo-based studio will focus on ideating, developing and producing series and films for Crunchyroll’s 15 million subscribers. The plan is for Hayate to leverage Aniplex’s production pipeline to create this new content, while Crunchyroll’s team contributes to the content development process and manages marketing and distribution. 

Aniplex’s consortium of companies includes anime studios A-1 Pictures (Sword Art Online, Solo Leveling) and CloverWorks (My Dress-Up Darling, Spy x Family), as well as game developer Lasengle (Fate/Grand Order). 

Sony’s now-defunct Funimation banner acquired Crunchyroll from AT&T for US$1.2 billion in August 2021. According to Parrot Analytics, it currently ranks as the world’s second highest-earning streaming platform for anime, generating more than US$1.16 billion in revenue annually. This puts Crunchyroll ahead of Hulu (US$903 million) and Amazon Prime Video (US$515 million), but behind market leader Netflix (US$2.07 billion). 

Feature image of Spy x Family credited to Crunchyroll