The successful game publisher Animoca Brands, which also invests in a considerable number of diverse projects, has just closed a $75 million fundraising round. The company wants to focus on the right to digital property, a key point for the future of metaverses according to the company.
Animoca Brands raises $75 million to expand
The bear market can sometimes reveal curious contrasts. While some companies have to lay off staff, are forced to stop withdrawals on their platform or are dragged down by colossal investment funds, some continue to prepare their future.
Animoca Brands, the successful company specializing in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse, has just completed a fundraising round at over $75 million. This latest round is a direct follow-up to the previous one in January this year, through which the company exceeded $5 billion in valuation.
The round, led by the investment fund Liberty City Ventures, saw a plethora of investors such as Kingsway Capital, Alpha Wave Ventures, 10T, SG Spring Limited Partnership Fund and Generation Highway Ltd.
The founder and CEO of Kingsway Capital, Manuel Stotz, was enthusiastic about his investment in Animoca Brands:
“The long-term growth trajectory of NFTs and similar proprietary technologies is extraordinarily steep, especially in emerging markets. We are excited to expand our partnership with Animoca Brands, which has earned its stripes by emerging from the previous 2018-2019 crypto winter with a much larger and stronger company.”
Development on multiple fronts
According to Animoca Brands’ release, the new capital injection will allow the firm to continue funding strategic acquisitions, invest heavily as well as license intellectual properties.
The company will also continue to contribute to the evolution of the metaverse, particularly by promoting digital property rights for users, the linchpin to the future of these virtual worlds, according to Yat Siu, Animoca Brands’ executive director:
“Digital property rights represent a defining generational shift for society, impacting the entire online world and will pave the way for the emergence of the open metaverse.”
Animoca Brands has already invested heavily in Web 3.0, notably through Sky Mavis (the developer of Axie Infinity), and in projects as diverse and varied as Polygon (MATIC), Ledger, The Sandbox (SAND), Yield Guild, the Kraken exchange or the OpenSea platform.
In its last financial statement, published in April, Animoca Brands said its investment portfolio was worth $1.5 billion and its digital asset pool was worth about $4.2 billion.
However, NFTs and metaverses are feeling the weight of the bear market. Indeed, June was the worst month of the year in terms of volume for non-fungible tokens.
