Animoca Brands Starts Raising $2 Billion to Invest in Metaworlds
A Hong Kong company intends to create the Animoca Capital fund, which will focus on mid- to late-stage projects rather than supporting new startups
Animoca Brands has begun raising $2 billion to invest in meta-universes. The company plans to launch a fund called Animoca Capital, with the first investment expected next year, co-founder and chief executive Yat Siu told Nikkei Asia. He said the target size of the emerging fund is $1 billion to $2 billion, but the funds have yet to be raised.
Animoca Brands is a Hong Kong-based venture capital firm and game developer founded in 2014. Its investors include Singapore-based national fund Temasek, GGV Capital from the U.S. and Mirae Asset Management from South Korea. Animoca Brands itself has invested in about 380 crypto projects, including some of today's best-known NFT platforms and blockchain games such as Axie Infinity, OpenSea, Dapper Labs, CryptoKitties and The Sandbox.
According to Siu, the main goal of this investment was to grow the Web3 ecosystem and create an active marketplace, but now there is a need for a separate investment vehicle that will improve capital efficiency in the industry.
The fund will focus on optimizing the capital of existing projects, the executive said. He noted that Animoca investors want to engage with mid- to late-stage companies, which is very different from investing in an initial startup, which involves much higher risk.
Meta universes refers to a virtual reality space in which users can communicate and trade goods as they would in the real world.
The new fund will be one of Animoca Brands' tools to achieve long-term goals, such as recognizing digital property in the legal system alongside physical property.
Speaking about the current situation in the crypto industry, Siu said Animoca Brands will contribute $10 million to an industry recovery initiative led by Binance.
