Animoca Brands Review: Top Metaverse And Gaming Specialized Investment Fund

April 20, 2023 - Around 12 mins mins to read

Several NFT projects are now under active development. Behind this rise, it is hard to ignore the assistance and support of crypto investment funds. Animoca Brands is one of the investment funds worth noticing. Let’s find out details about this project with Coincu through this Animoca Brands Review article.

Animoca Brands Review: Top Metaverse And Gaming Specialized Investment Fund

Play to Earn became a money-making trend in mid-2021, in the setting of the worldwide pandemic, the number of people quitting their employment expanded dramatically and fast, this new trend not only helps many people make more revenue, and this tendency has given rise to Animoca Brands, an investment firm focusing in NFT, Gaming, and Metaverse.

What are Animoca Brands?

Animoca Brands is a pioneering investment fund focusing in NFT, gaming, and metaverse, having offices and subsidiaries in many different countries like the United States, Finland, Korea, and Canada, as well as Argentina, Germany, and Australia. Animoca Brands has built a strong reputation in the worldwide investment community by focusing on projects in the technology and entertainment areas.

Animoca Brands, while being created in 2014, only became publicly recognized after the pandemic reached its apex and destroyed the global economy. There is, however, a chance for Animoca to create viable initiatives and attract major investment from investors. With the expanding metaverse trend in particular, Animoca is once again praised for having invested in the appropriate trendy initiatives.

The fund, in addition to investing in promising ventures, has its own projects, such as The Sandbox, one of the pioneering projects in the metaverse sector. Animoca will continue to expand and contribute to the growth of this business in the future with consistent attention and efforts. Now, the Animoca Brands Review article will learn about the core team of the project.

Team

Yat Siu – Co-Founder

Yat Siu, one of Hong Kong’s most promising young entrepreneurs, was recognized at the 2009 DHL/SCMP Business Awards. He is the creator of Cybercity, a firm that provides e-services. Asia’s first free email service and website. Since then, Cybercity has swiftly grown to become one of Hong Kong’s most sophisticated technological firms, and it is well-known across Asia. Yat Siu has made significant contributions to the growth of Hong Kong’s technology sector and has become one of the city’s most renowned business figures.

Some outstanding awards and achievements that Yat Siu has achieved:

Standard Chartered Platinum Achievers Award
URENCO Innovation Award
IT Excellence Product Award for Realizing Its Vision at Outblaze
2003 Linux Business Adoption Award and Information & Asia-Pacific
2003 Media Technology Award
Young Entrepreneur at DHL/SCMP Hong Kong Business Awards 2009
Established Cybercity, Asia’s first free website and email provider
Advisor of Our HongKong Foundation

Evan Auyang – Group President

He was formerly the CEO and Director of GLG International, a technology-enabled platform. He has helped his firm extend its horizons and boost operational efficiency throughout numerous nations, including Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific, thanks to his exceptional ability to operate and build business operations. In addition, he serves as an adviser to the Our Hong Kong Foundation. His rich expertise and leadership abilities have aided the growth of the enterprises and organizations for which he has worked.

Other key members

Robby Yung: CEO operating in North America
Arnoldo Concepcion: COO
John Madden: CFO
Yusuf Goolamabbas: CTO
Ibrahim El-Mouelhy: CCO

Portfolio

Esports

This is one of the fund’s primary investment distinctions. A market segment that is gradually being introduced into the Crypto realm. The money invested in these competitions is massive. This demonstrates that the fund has a completely distinct investing philosophy.

While this section is not regarded to be part of the overall crypto business, esport is quickly becoming one of the trendiest terms nowadays. The amount of money spent on tournaments is growing day by day as the economy grows. The most noteworthy example is The International in Dota 2, where the prize money has increased year after year since its inception.

However, when we examine Animoca Brands’ investing philosophy, we can plainly observe a major difference when compared to other crypto investment funds. As a result, despite the fact that this area is not yet deemed crypto, Animoca Brands is a pioneer in investing in this industry.

Guild

Yield Guild Game is a guild in the first Gaming field and the biggest guild in the world today. Yield Guild Game has received seed investment, Series A funding, and an undisclosed round from investors, including Animoca Brands, Delphi Digital, Parafi, IDEO Colab, and a16z. The Yield Guild Game paradigm has also been reproduced in other projects such as Guild Fi and Ancient 8.
In a seed funding round, Guild Fi also piqued the attention of Animoca Brands, Coin98 Ventures, and Hashed. Ancient 8 is a Vietnamese project that collaborated with Coin68, Coin98, and certain FTX professionals. While Animoca Brands has invested in nine Guild Game initiatives, the models for these projects are quite similar. This demonstrates that the investment in Guild Game may be attributable to the project team or accompanying investment money rather than the substance of the product.
Ancient 8: Guild Game is a Vietnamese game developed with the help of Coin68 and Coin98, as well as certain FTX personnel. Animoca Brands joins Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase, Pantera, and others in a seed round (1/2022).

Crypto wallet

They make investments in well-known companies such as Metamask, Ledger, and SafePal. Whether it is a cool or hot wallet, the Fund demonstrates that it is unconcerned with the wallet’s hidden treasures. This is just a subset of Animoca Brands’ investing opportunities.

Metamask, created by the startup ConsenSys, was one of the first and is now one of the most popular decentralized wallets. ConsenSys Has received two rounds of investment, the first in April 2021 with involvement from Mastercard, The Maker Foundation, and The Lao, and the second in November 2021 with participation from ParaFi, Coinbase, Animoca Brands, Dragonfly, Spartan, and DeFiance. The fact that Metamask and the ConsenSys organization have attracted big partners to invest in their technologies demonstrates their success.
SafePal is a storage wallet with both hardware and soft wallet devices that are available for token sale on Binance Launchpool. Binance Labs has also included it on its list of Incubator Season 3 ventures. Nevertheless, no information about the term of Animoca Brands’ investment in SafePal was discovered.
Ledger is a well-known hardware wallet brand in the cryptocurrency field. Nevertheless, there is no information on how long Animoca Brands will be investing in Ledger.
Xdefi Wallet is a multipurpose wallet that can store and exchange tokens. Nevertheless, it is only available as a browser extension. In September 2021, Animoca Brands invested in this project in a Seed round alongside Alameda, CoinGecko, Mechanism, and others.

Marketplace

Since they are a large fund in the NFT network, the fund invests heavily in the market’s Marketplaces. Opensea and Magic Eden are most likely the two prominent brands with the largest market share on Ethereum and Solana right now. There is also the Highstreet initiative, in which major companies may sell their NFTs.

In its virtual environment, the Highstreet initiative enables companies to sell NFTs. Highstreet has received two rounds of funding: Seed (August 2021) and Strategic (November 2021), with partners including Mechanism, NGC, Jump Capital, Binance Labs, and Animoca Brands.
With a daily trading volume of several hundred million dollars, OpenSea is the biggest NFT exchange today. It has received four rounds of investment, including Seed (11/2019), Series A (3/2021), Series B (7/2021), and Series C (1/2022), with partners like Mark Cuban, a16z, and Paradigm.
Magic Eden is a new NFT exchange that launched in 2021 and has a high trading volume on the Solana platform, which is considered a “OpenSea” version. Nevertheless, no information about the term of Animoca Brands’ involvement in Magic Eden was discovered.

DeFi

The fund does not place a high priority on this area of investing. Since this is not their area of expertise, they often partner with other huge funds. Amasa, DeFi Land, Stader, MonoSwap, and other investment ventures might be highlighted.

Amasa: Animoca Brands has invested in a startup to allow people to make funds from simple activities like playing games and viewing movies, and to collect these earnings for easier administration.
OKX and other funds contributed to the Seed Round (9/2021). Claystake: Liquid staking eliminates the wasteful use of funds during staked.
DeFi Land: A DeFi farm simulation game with funding from Animoca Brands, Alameda, and Jump Capital… Round of seeds (9/2021).
Stader: The project successfully serves Staking users, providing auto-compounding and locating validators with high APY. Stader began the token sale on CoinList with two rounds of financing, however, there is no information on the investment time frame from Animoca Brands.
KikiTrade: In October 2021, Animoca Brands will collaborate with the Kiki Trade crypto loan and investing application.
Animoca Brands, together with a number of other investors, invested in MonoSwap, a concept that allows people to invest, Swap, and offer 1-sided liquidity, at the Seed round (September 2021).

Infrastructure

Infrastructure funds are often layers that suit NFT effectively. Flow, Polygon, and Immutable X are examples of these. Moreover, infrastructures exist to make transactions simpler and more comfortable. This Fund does not provide investment numbers.

Flow: A blockchain built for the creation of NFTs. Animoca Brands’ time investment in Flow could not be located.
Polygon: One of the Largest Sidechains to Address Ethereum’s Congestion. The Polygon ecosystem saw a meteoric 2021.
Immutable X: The first NFT-specific Layer 2. There was no time available for Animoca Brands to invest in Immutable X. Animoca Brands, on the other hand, stated in May 2021 that they will employ Immutable X to issue digital assets.
Harmony: Blockchain employs Sharding technology, which is similar to how Ethereum 2.0 operates. In October 2018, Harmony and Animoca Brands collaborated to create Blockchain Gaming.
Burnt Finance: Auction platform, Solana NFT creation.

Art

Concept Art House is a firm that specializes in assisting with other NFT art projects. Concept Art House guarantees to deliver consumers the most original and attractive NFT works with a team of expert personnel and long-term experience in the area of digital art. Recently, Animoca Brands and Spartan invested in Concept Art House in a Series A round (October 2021) to support the development of NFT projects at the firm.
Kollektion is a website that serves as a meeting place for prominent musicians and their followers. The website enables artists to develop and sell their own distinctive NFT artwork to fans. Kollektion, as a result of this collaboration, provides artists with a new option to communicate with fans and earn money from their work.

Metaverse

Since Animoca Brands has a subsidiary The Sandbox, this is considered a successful portfolio. Not to mention the amazing initiatives in which they have funded, such as Decentraland, Star Atlas, and others. As the Metaverse blossomed, The Sandbox and Decentraland initiatives in particular helped the Fund’s name become more well-known.

The Sandbox: The Metaverse project has been around for a long time and is expected to develop significantly in 2021.
The Metaverse game Star Atlas is set in space, with planets and spacecraft at its heart. Star Atlas sold $3 million in NFTs to Animoca Brands in December 2021. This is part of the Galaxy Asset Offering from Star Atlas (GAO).
Bit Country: Polkadot project that allows people to create worlds in Metaverse without any technical skills. Animoca Brands, along with several other funds, invests in the Seed round (May 2021).
Decentraland: Decentraland, along with The Sandbox, is the most visible Metaverse project in the Metaverse trend. In 2018, Animoca Brands collaborated with Decentraland to co-develop two games for the Decentraland platform.

Blockchain Gaming

This is the most active investment category in the fields in which they operate. The popularity of this game, most likely beginning with Axie Infinity & Sky Mavisi, has opened up new avenues for many more projects.

The fund also invests in projects comparable to Thetan Arena and Mines of Darlarnia. Earnings are undoubtedly enough and superior to other categories.

Axie Infinity and Sky Mavis: Axie Infinity is a game that pioneered the Play to Earn concept, assisting many individuals in earning money during the epidemic season. Sky Mavis is the firm behind Axie Infinity’s development team.
Thetan Arena: This Vietnamese game is one of the few that does not follow the turn base direction. Thetan Arena investment by Animoca Brands could not be located.
Mines of Darlarnia: A fun mining game with token distribution through Binance Launchpool. Animoca Brands joins Coin98, Crypto.com, and others in the Seed round (9/2021).

Animoca Brands’ own fundraising

Animoca Brands not only invests in new companies but also raises funds in many stages. The basic goal of these fundraising rounds is to get intellectual property licenses and invest in new enterprises. Specifically:

7/2021: Coinbase and some other funds, pre-money valuation is $1 billion.
10/2021: Ubisoft, Sequoia, Dragonfly… for $ 65 million with a $ 2.2 billion value via a share sale.
1/2022: Parafi, Sequoia… for 358 million USD with a value of 5 billion USD via a share sale.
7/2022: Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, Alpha Wave Ventures… raise $75 million via share sales.
Animoca Brand Japan (a subsidiary of Animoca) raises $45 million from MUFG Bank at a value of $ 500 million in August 2022.
Temasek, Boyu Capital, and GGV will invest $110 million in convertible notes in September 2022.

Conclusion of Animoca Brands Review

According to the portfolio, Animoca Brands mostly works on NFT initiatives. This demonstrates that Animoca believes the P2E, NFT, and Metaverse markets will continue to develop in the future, and Animoca Brands will not pass up this investment opportunity.

As can be seen, Animoca Brands is a significant venture capital business in the cryptocurrency sector. Animoca is drawn to current popular projects. Nonetheless, the initiatives in which Animoca invests are all well-funded and thoroughly evaluated before investing. Hopefully the Animoca Brands Review article has helped you understand more about the project.

DISCLAIMER: The information on this website is provided as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice. We encourage you to do your own research before investing.

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Other Reviews

Animoca Brands Review: Top Metaverse And Gaming Specialized Investment Fund

Several NFT projects are now under active development. Behind this rise, it is hard to ignore the assistance and support of crypto investment funds. Animoca Brands is one of the investment funds worth noticing. Let’s find out details about this project with Coincu through this Animoca Brands Review article.

What are Animoca Brands?