Animoca Brands raises $6.5m to fund investments, product development

Animoca Brands, the Hong Kong-based company that brings property rights to gamers via NFTs, announced that it has raised $65 million in its latest funding round at a pre-money valuation of $2.2 billion.

The announcement said the capital raise was participated by a number of investors, including Liberty City Ventures, Ubisoft Entertainment, Sequoia China, Dragonfly Capital, Com2uS, Kingsway Capital, 10T Holdings, Token Bay Capital, Smile Group, and Tess Ventures.

MSA Capital, Octava Fund, Adit Ventures, Summer Capital, Sigitech Holdings, Black Anthem Ltd, Mirana Corp, and Justin Sun also participated in the funding round.

The new capital will be used to fund strategic investments and acquisitions, product development, and licenses for popular intellectual properties.

The latest funding round comes after Animoca Brands raised $138.88 million earlier in the year on the strength of its plan to deliver digital property rights via NFTs.

Animoca Brands, ranked in the Financial Times list of High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific 2021, is a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification.

The company and its subsidiaries offer a broad portfolio of game products, both centralized and decentralized, branded and original, with coverage across most primary platforms including mobile devices, game consoles, PC, web, and blockchain.

Products include games ranging from hyper-casual to hardcore, as well as collectibles, utility tokens, esports titles, and more.

“With the backing of our new strategic investors, Animoca Brands will continue to advance blockchain in gaming – and beyond – to introduce billions of gamers and Internet users to true digital ownership,” said Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands.

Mia Deng, partner at Dragonfly Capital, believes that the gaming, art, and music industries are entering a digital renaissance period uniquely enabled by blockchain.

“Yat and his team have demonstrated vision and foresight from the beginning and we are therefore excited to partner with Animoca Brands to build some of the largest on-ramps of the virtual world,” Deng added.

Early this year, the company acquired Blowfish Studios, an independent Sydney-based developer and publisher of multi-platform games. It paid about $6.6 million in upfront cash plus payments of up to $19.3 million, conditional on certain employment and performance targets, to acquire 100% of Blowfish Studios.