IOI
This second tranche of funding for Animoca extends its recent $88.88 million round, which invited Coinbase Ventures as an investor.
After debuting their $88.88 million fundraising round in May, Animoca Brands has announced that they have raised an additional $68 million by bringing in external investors. This has brought their total investment tally to $1 billion.
Animoca has added a second $200 million funding tranche along with the original amount to make the total for the now-completed round $138.88 million. The additional money was raised at the same valuation as first announced in May, according to Animoca.
Along with Samsung Venture Investment Corporation and Razer’s zVentures, Coinbase Ventures, the investment arm of the popular cryptocurrency exchange, is among the major new investors backing Animoca in this extended round. In addition to Korea Investment Partners, Blue Pool Capital, Scopely, Liberty City Ventures, Gobi Partners, and Token Bay Capital, other investors were also disclosed.
Animoca Brands creates blockchain-based video games utilizing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that can be owned by players, reward them by completing quests, and let them trade items for currencies. NFTs can be anything from artwork to video clips, from clothing to weapons to plots of land, trading cards to trading cards.
Animoca was involved in almost all major crypto gaming projects before this year’s overall NFT market boom. While the firm develops its own NFT-based games, it has also partnered on many other such projects.
In addition to its software, Animation Brands publishes crypto games such as The Sandbox, an open-world creation game, and F1 Delta Time, a licensed racing simulator. The Sandbox and Formula 1 have both made headlines for their respective high-value NFT sales, including millions of dollars’ worth of LAND plots in The Sandbox and expensive car and track NFTs in the game. As of April, Animoca reported it sold $9.28 million of NFTs for the two games in just three days.
The company also produces NFT games based on properties like Bratz, MotoGP, Manchester City FC, and others, and operates a few tokens related to games: GAMEE, TOWER, and LMT, along with The Sandbox’s currency, SAND. In addition to investing in a number of companies, Animation has partnered with NBA player Spencer Dinwiddie’s Calaxy social token app and Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis. In addition to distributing crypto-infused editions of Atari classic games, Cryptoess partnered with Atari to release the retro games.
RIT Capital Partners, Huobi, and the Metapurse were among May’s investors in the $88.88 million round of funding. The company today announced it would create new NFTs in honor of the achievement of its unicorn status, which was achieved after reaching $1 billion in valuation.
