Motoaki Tanigo

Japanese entrepreneur, founder of COVER Corp.¹

Born Dec 10, 1973.¹

About

Hololive Production, also known as just Hololive (both names stylized in lowercase), is a virtual YouTuber agency owned by Japanese tech entertainment company Cover Corporation. In addition to acting as a multi-channel network, Hololive Production also handles licensing, merchandising, music production and concert organization. As of June 2026, channels operated by Hololive Production had a combined 95.2 million subscribers on YouTube. The agency includes Japanese, Indonesian and English-speaking talents, including several of the most subscribed VTubers on YouTube and some of the most watched female streamers in the world.

The name "Hololive" was initially used for Cover's 3D stream distribution app, launched in December 2017, and later its female VTuber agency, whose first generation debuted from May to June 2018. In December 2019, Hololive was merged with Cover's male Holostars agency and INoNaKa music label under the unified "Hololive Production" brand.

From Wikipedia’s article on Motoaki Tanigo, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.²

Companies

COVER CorporationChief executive officer 2016 to now¹⁴

Early life and education

Date not recordedKeio University^{3 4}

Career

Occupation: chief executive officer, video game producer, entrepreneur, managing director, businessperson.⁶

Since 2016Chief executive, COVER Corporation⁵

Along with its major competitor Nijisanji, a VTuber agency owned by Anycolor, Inc., Hololive Production dominates the corporate VTuber market as of 2022. By "harness[ing] the entertainment value of both streaming and J-pop idol groups", Cover operates at a scale not possible for independent VTubers, and has used its funding to create merchandise, produce music, and host live 3D events. As of 2021, Cover has held three major funding rounds:

August 2017 – 30 million yen (US$280,000) in seed funding from venture capital firms Mizuho Capital, TLM, and angel investors

June 2018 – 200 million yen (US$1.9 million) in a Series A round from GREE Ventures, OLM Ventures, and Mizuho Capital

May 2020 – 700 million yen (US$6.6 million) from various sources, including Hakuhodo DY Ventures and SMBC Venture Capital

Most Hololive streamers work full-time, while others stream as a side job. According to data collection site Playboard, the all-time top Super Chat earners in history are channels run by Hololive talents: Uruha Rushia, Kiryu Coco, Usada Pekora and Houshou Marine. Other talents featured in the all-time top 10 include Minato Aqua, Amane Kanata and Yukihana Lamy.

By September 2020, Hololive channels had more than 10 million combined subscribers on YouTube, and 10 million additional combined subscribers on Chinese platform Bilibili. As of November 2021, the agency has accumulated over 50 million subscribers across its 80+ channels on YouTube. On 22 October 2020, English VTuber Gawr Gura became the first Hololive member to reach 1 million YouTube subscribers; on 17 January 2021, she became the first Hololive member to reach 2 million subscribers on the platform and the second VTuber to do so, after Kizuna AI. Gawr Gura became the first VTuber to reach 3 million subscribers on YouTube on 4 July 2021, having surpassed Kizuna AI at 2.97 million on 30 June.

According to data analysis firm Stream Charts, Usada Pekora is one of the most popular female streamers globally by watch hours including in 2023 where she was number one. Alongside her, Hakui Koyori, Sakura Miko and Oozora Subaru was also among the top 10 for that year ranking.

According to Tanigo, Hololive's primary audience are mostly males in their mid-teens to mid-thirties, with Japanese fans being mostly those who are interested in video games while overseas viewers are more likely to be anime fans specifically. Hololive's overseas audiences are primarily from North America and Asia, especially southeast Asia. According to Cover's FY2025/3 Financial Report, overseas viewers represented 30% of their viewership and contributed 10 billion yen worth of the revenue for that year (slightly less than a quarter of their total revenue).

CEO Motoaki Tanigo was selected as one of the Japan's Top 20 Entrepreneurs by Forbes Japan in its January 2022 issue.

Studio

Cover Corp invested 2.7 billion yen for a new motion capture studio, which opened in May 2023. The facility includes motion capture, green screen filming, and recording functions. The motion capture room is equipped with over 200 VICON cameras to improve tracking precision. The recording equipment is capable of producing music industry standard audio capture. With a space equivalent to ten tennis courts, the studio is one of the largest of its kind in Japan.

Business operations post-IPO

According to its quarterly financial results and presentations, Cover operates as a vertically integrated entertainment business, built around 4 revenue streams:

Streaming/Content

Concert/Events

Merchandising

Licensing/Collaborations.

Cover describes its business model as a "flywheel," where talents create valued content that drives community growth, and, in turn, fuels cross-business monetization through live events, merchandise, trading card games, and IP licensing partnerships.

For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026, Cover reported revenue of 49.33 billion yen, a 13.7% year-on-year increase, driven primarily by strong performance in Concerts/Events (+18.7%) and Licensing/Collaborations (+25.3%). Operating profit declined 11.8% YoY to 7.06 billion yen, and net profit fell 45.7% to 3.02 billion yen. The earnings decline was largely attributable to one-time non-cash charges: a 3.3 billion yen impairment loss on assets related to the discontinued metaverse project "holoEarth," and 1.8 billion yen in write-downs of slow-moving merchandise inventory accumulated during an SKU expansion period in 2023 and 2024. Excluding these charges, management indicates that core cash generation continued to grow steadily.

In response to the results, Cover has formally transitioned from a "quantitative expansion" phase to a "qualitative expansion" phase, concentrating capital investment on talent value creation as its central medium-to-long-term strategy. Key operational priorities include establishing a structured talent development pipeline through permanent auditions and the newly launched trainee program "mekPark", integrating holoEarth's accumulated technologies into existing streaming infrastructure, expanding global licensing and supply chain operations, and releasing its first major smartphone title, hololive Dreams, in FY2027. The company has also implemented organizational restructuring to simplify decision-making and strengthen investment evaluation discipline.

In its FY2026/3 financial report and the subsequent press conference, CEO Motoaki Tanigo stated that Cover has outlined a FY2027 revenue of 51.35 billion yen and operating profit of approximately 7.0 billion yen, noting a front-loaded investment stance in the first half as it builds out talent management and creative production systems. Medium-term targets remain unchanged at 100 billion yen in revenue and 25 billion yen in operating profit by FY2030, to be achieved primarily through organic growth with strategic merger and acquisition and external partnerships remaining open options. The company also authorized a share buyback program of up to 3 billion yen through July 2026 as part of its capital efficiency initiatives.

From Wikipedia’s article on Motoaki Tanigo (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

CitizenshipJapan⁷

Legal issues and controversies

Taiwan controversy and suspensions

In September 2020, Kiryu Coco and Akai Haato each mentioned Taiwan on-stream while discussing YouTube channel analytics, which then listed Taiwan as a country in the Japanese interface. Their comments sparked outrage among viewers in mainland China, and were followed by a statement from Cover in Japanese, English, and Chinese on 27 September. In it, the company faulted the talents for "making statements insensitive to certain nationalities" and for "divulging confidential YouTube channel analytics information". Each received a three-week suspension from all activities.

In a separate Chinese-only statement posted earlier on Bilibili, Cover had stated that Coco and Haato's comments did not reflect its policy on China, and reaffirmed its support for the One-China policy and its commitment to doing business in the country. Three days later, the company released another statement addressing the discrepancies between the messages, stating that the Bilibili statement was released "due to the desire to adapt it to the needs of the audience". Cover apologized for confusion it had caused, and announced changes in its procedure for releasing regional statements and the formation of a committee to prevent similar incidents. On 19 October, both resumed their streaming activities as scheduled.

After a "rush of harassment, reports, and apparent boycotting on Bilibili", all six members of Hololive China retired on different dates in late 2020.