Animoca Brands raises over HK$591m to advance open metaverse

Hong Kong-based game software company Animoca Brands has completed a capital raise of US$75.32m (approximately HK$591m) to fund strategic acquisitions and advance the open metaverse. The company’s latest funding round came despite a crash in the cryptocurrency market that has wiped billions of dollars from the value of popular tokens.

The current raise is the second tranche of the funding previously announced on 18 January 2022, which was extended to accommodate due diligence processes. Investors in the current tranche included Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, Alpha Wave Ventures, 10T, SG Spring Limited Partnership Fund, Generation Highway, Cosmic Summit Investments, and others. Animoca Brands will use the new capital to continue to fund strategic acquisitions, investments, and product development, secure licenses for popular intellectual properties, and advance the open metaverse, including through its efforts to promote digital property rights for online users.

Using technologies including blockchain and NFTs, Animoca Brands is working to deliver true digital ownership of users’ virtual assets and data, enabling various DeFi and GameFi opportunities (including play-and-earn), asset interoperability, and an open framework that can lead to greater equitability for all participants in the open metaverse.

As one of the world’s technology groups in blockchain and gaming, the company gets involved further in the emerging open metaverse by spearheading and innovating decentralised in-game rewards and monetisation in video games.

Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, said: “Digital property rights represent a society-defining generational shift that impacts everyone online and will set the stage for the emergence of the open metaverse. We are deeply honoured to continue to enjoy strong support from investors as we work to solidify the leadership position of Animoca Brands in the Web3 industry and in the field of true digital ownership.”

Emil Woods, managing partner of Liberty City Ventures, added: “Over the next decade, humanity will discover and embrace the game changing power that blockchain based digital ownership of assets will bring to countless aspects of daily life. We are proud to support Animoca Brands, a highly talented team of visionaries and builders at the forefront of this movement to embrace and fulfil the promise of Web3.”

Manuel Stotz, the founder and CEO of Kingsway Capital, said: "The genie of digital property rights has been let out of the bottle, and the Internet users engaging with this revolutionary technology will not be returning to the digital servitude that is common in Web 2.0. The long-term growth trajectory of NFTs and similar ownership technology is extraordinarily steep, especially in emerging markets. We are thrilled to grow our continuing partnership with Animoca Brands, who earned its stripes by emerging from the previous crypto winter of 2018-2019 with a much larger and stronger business."

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