Animoca Brands raises US$ 359 million, with over US$ 5 billion valuation

Following a new funding round that was held today, Hong Kong-based venture capital and game company Animoca Brands, a company driving digital property rights through NFTs and gaming to build an open metaverse, announced that it has reached a pre-money valuation of over US$5 billion.
 

The funding round where the company raised capital of approximately US$359 million was led by Liberty City Ventures among other investors, including 10T Holdings, Kingsway, Mirae Asset, Sequoia China, Winklevoss Capital, and others.
 

Its current valuation is an impressive leap, considering it was valued at $2.2 billion in October after closing a $65 million funding round aimed at inviting new partners. The capital will be used to fund strategic acquisitions and investments, product development, and licenses for popular intellectual properties.
 

Who is behind Animoca Brands? 

Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, commented: “We are pleased to see continued and growing support from influential and strategic investors for Animoca Brands’ mission to deliver true digital property rights and build the open metaverse.”
 

The company revealed the new capital would be used to continue funding strategic acquisitions and investments, product development, and licenses for popular intellectual properties.

Animoca Brands, its allies and its empire

Animoca Brands is a serial investor in the NFT and metaverse space, having funded over 150 related companies. Some of these projects include OpenSea, Sky Mavis – the company behind the Axie Infinity game – and NBA Top Shot developer Dapper Labs.

The Sandbox is one of the company’s most notable subsidiaries. The Sandbox is an Ethereum based metaverse game that counts several high-profile brands as partners, including Adidas, Atari, Deadmau5, Snoop Dogg, and more.

Other Animoca subsidiaries include Blowfish Studios, Quidd, GAMEE, nWay, Pixowl, Lympo, and Bondly. The company also runs Launchpad Luna - an accelerator to foster startups in the blockchain and NFT space – in collaboration with Brinc.

Animoca Brands and subsidiaries offer a broad portfolio of game products, centralized and decentralized, branded and original, across major platforms, including mobile devices, game consoles, PC, the web, and blockchain. Products include games ranging from hyper-casual to hardcore, as well as collectibles, utility tokens, esports titles, and more.

“We have set ourselves the ambitious goals of building an open Web3 and facilitating an open metaverse that expands financial inclusion. In 2021 we saw tremendous growth in this space, and Animoca Brands has been one of the forefront leaders in the development of this industry. We believe we are still at the initial stages of a new Internet revolution, and there are tremendous opportunities ahead of us in 2022 and beyond,” Yat Siu added.

Photo: Animoca Brands