“Chain game development and investment firm Animoca Brands has raised $358.8 million, led by Liberty City Ventures, 10T Holdings, Gemini Frontier Fund, ParaFi Capital, Provident, Sequoia China and Winklevoss Capital, Cointelegraph reported. and other institutions participated in the investment, with a post-investment valuation of $5 billion. It is reported that Animoca said the capital injection will be used to fund strategic acquisitions and investments, product development and intellectual property licensing. The company said its vision is to create a metaverse, through NFTs enhance users’ digital property rights.”
That’s a huge leap from the company’s $2.2 billion valuation when it raised $65 million in October 2021.
Animoca Brands
Animoca Brands, headquartered in Hong Kong, is a subsidiary spun off from Animoca (Appionics Holdings Ltd.). It was founded in 2014 by the famous Hong Kong technology entrepreneur Xiao Yi. Perhaps many non-gamers are not familiar with Animoca Brands, but they must be familiar with popular anime characters such as Doraemon, Marvel , Garfield, Dinosaur Team , and Cherry Maruko. As a developer specializing in the production and adaptation of well-known mobile games for the iOS platform and Google Play , Animoca Brands has the right to develop these big IP comic mobile games.
Animoca Brands was a company with traditional mobile game development as its core business two years ago.Now a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, gamification and artificial intelligence is listed in the Financial Times 2021 Asia Pacific High Growth Companies. Animoca Brands develops and publishes its extensive portfolio including REVV and SAND; original games including The Sandbox, Crazy Kings and Crazy Defense Heroes.
With the outbreak of chain games and the metaverse track in the second half of 2021, Animoca Brands, a unicorn that has been deployed in this field for a long time, is making its debut.
Animoca Brands is actively involved in the blockchain. In addition to making various expansionary investments similar to A16z, it also actively establishes various cooperation with major chain game companies. Currently, Animoca Brands, etc. It can be said that Animoca Brand is becoming the invisible king of the "chain game + NFT" territory.
Animoca Brands enters the metaverse
Animoca Brands acquires Pixowl, the developer of UGC (User Generated Content) gaming platform The Sandbox, for $4.875 million
“We bought it for less than $5 million Pixowl and Sandbox proved to be a very successful investment,” said Animoca Brands founder.
The Sandbox (sandbox game) is a virtual game ecosystem developed by blockchain technology , featuring a virtual world,Players can build, own and earn benefits in it, and it belongs to the Play to earn model. Unlike traditional games, using free software provided by The Sandbox, such as VoxEdit and Game Maker, players, artists and game designers can create assets and applications for themselves, such as games, dioramas and art galleries, and share them with others, to gain benefits. The Sandbox aims to bring blockchain into the mainstream by attracting more crypto and non-crypto gaming enthusiasts through the benefits of true ownership, digital scarcity, profitability and interoperability that blockchain technology brings game world.
The Sandbox is not a new game. The game launched a mobile version in 2012 and was named "Game of the Year" by Apple that year. Animoca Brands acquired it in 2018 and launched a blockchain version of the game. In terms of playability, The Sandbox is higher and more mature than some of the new blockchain games that have come out so far.
The Sandbox is currently one of the most successful projects in Animoca Brands' investment landscape. The sandbox 's circulating market value has reached 26 billion yuan as of 1.19, and the fully diluted market value has reached 85 billion yuan.
Animoca Brands' tokens also give players a nice reward. Taking SAND as an example, CMC data shows that in the past year, Sand has increased by about 8,300%.
Animoca Brandss laying out the chain game track
chain game began to explode in the summer of 2021. The P2E business model led by Axie and the mature economic model drove the gamefi market.Yat Siu, founder and chairman of Animoca Brandss, and Andrew Steinwold, an NFT investor, believe that P2E is a way for chain games to quickly attract players.
Andrew Steinwold says that as long as half of the world's 2.7 billion gamers can be attracted, a free-trading economy can be formed, which will not only free up billions of dollars, create new economies, but also allow Millions of people gain new economic opportunities.
Animoca Brandss 's first test project is "CryptoKitties" released by Dapper Labs, which is a pioneering blockchain game that popularized NFTs. is in the chain game track, Animoca Brands introduces traditional world brands into chain games by acquiring game companies and launching original games, and actively investing in related infrastructure, star chain games and peripherals (guilds, etc.).
Animoca Brands has made more than 100 investments in NFT-related blockchain companies, of which, In November 2019, Animoca Brands led a $1.465 million financing round in Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis with $420,000 star project, Dapper Labs (NBA Top Shot card game), Yield Guild Games (the largest blockchain game guild), etc. In addition, from the investment in Opensea, the world's largest NFT trading platform, and its recent investment in NFT protocols, it can be seen that the company is not only a big player in chain games, but also a big player in the NFT industry.
2021,Animoca Brands' investment rhythm has accelerated significantly. As of December 24, 2021, Animoca Brands has accumulated at least 81 crypto-related public investments. In addition, the number of investments in the fourth quarter of this year accounted for 51% of the whole year, and the number of leading investment projects accounted for more than 36%.
In December 2021, Animoca Brands and BSC jointly launched a $200 million chain game investment fund, and the investment frequency in the future may continue to maintain a fast pace. At present, the company's official website shows that it has invested in more than 150 NFT/Metaverse projects.
Animoca Brands has made more than 100 investments in the past 3 years and has become the largest investor in the chain game field. What elements does Animoca Brands focus on? Xiao Yi, founder of
: "In the early stage, we value the team the most. If the early team is not profitable, we will look at the future potential. There are three criteria: business logic, delivery ability, and whether we believe that freedom and openness are the future. The third sign is whether the user's data assets can be NFTized. We have also encountered teams that say they are open, but actually want to control user data and assets. This kind of team must not vote. In addition, it is important to also Yes, the history of the team, why did you join the industry. Axie Infinity has a deep understanding of Southeast Asian users and markets because the team is located in Vietnam, so we were favored by us from the beginning.”
For these invested projects, Animoca Brands is not only funded In addition to support, it provides a full range of incubation services. Including more than 300 well-known IP resources, brand public relations, mechanism design and technical support, a series of project incubation services. This is due to the founder Xiao Yi's 20 years of venture capital experience in the Internet circle, which will be transformed into the assistance of this group of young entrepreneurial teams.
Animoca Brands Future
Animoca Brands is committed to bringing digital property rights to online users through the use of blockchain and NFTs,Thus building an open metaverse; these technologies enable true digital ownership of users' virtual assets and data, and enable various DeFi and GameFi opportunities (including play-to-earn), asset interoperability, and An open framework for greater fairness becomes possible. Meanwhile groundbreaking Animoca Brands showed the world the game-changing features of Web3 and open virtual worlds. Animoca Brands is championing a more decentralized, open, fair and inclusive future - where everyone can truly own and benefit from their digital property rights.
References
https://www.animocabrands.com/blockchain-projects
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-18/soros-winklevoss-invest -in-nft-creator-now-valued-at-5-billion
https://www.zvstus.com/article/news/1/75d87ffffe82a994345d597cf25f0000.html
https://www.tuoniaox .com/news/p-338301.html
https://www.tmtpost.com/5966848.html
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