NFT Metaverse-Focused Animoca Brands Raises $360M At $5B Valuation

Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands has raised $358.8 million at a $5-billion valuation from investors to fund NFT, gaming, and metaverse acquisitions.

What Happened: According to a report from TechCrunch, the eight-year-old company is now valued at triple the amount it was in October 2021.

The latest round of funding was led by Liberty City Ventures and saw participation from ParaFi Capital, Soros Fund Management, Wildcat Capital Management, Provident, Sequoia China and Winklevoss Capital.

Animoca Brands specializes in building blockchain-based virtual worlds and has invested in more than 150 NFT and metaverse-related companies.

Included in this list is the world’s largest decentralized NFT marketplace, OpenSea, which recently surpassed $10 billion in sales volume. Animoca Brands reportedly receives around 7.5% of every transaction of its NFTs on OpenSea.

The company expects to use its latest capital injection to fund even more investments in the space.

Why It Matters: Animoca was previously listed on the Australian Stock Exchange but was delisted in 2020. According to Animoca founder Yat Siu, the delisting was on the grounds that the ASX “didn’t like the fact that they were dealing with crypto.” The company now operates as an unlisted public company.

Still, more companies have embraced opportunities in the space in the last few years. In 2021 alone, BNN Bloomberg reported that venture funds had allocated $17 billion to crypto and blockchain-focused startups.

On Wednesday, crypto individual retirement account software platform iTrustCapital raised $125 million in Series A funding with a valuation of over $1.3 billion.

Price Action: At press time, the crypto market was valued at $1.98 trillion. Bitcoin BTC/USD was trading at $42,000, down 0.12% in the last 24 hours. Ethereum ETH/USD was trading at $3,100, up 0.49% over the same period.