Animoca Brands

Robby Yung, CEO of Animoca Brands

Investments

On November 15, 2011, mobile games developer Animoca raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a Series A round led by Intel Capital and IDG-Accel (which tapped its China Growth Fund III).[7] In 2014 Animoca Brands was spun out from Animoca, and the new entity listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in January 2015.[8]

From January to March of 2018, Animoca Brands started rolling out Crazy Kings and its sequel, Crazy Defense Heroes generating $2.8 million in revenue in the first three months worldwide.[9]

In March 2018, Animoca Brands launched OliveX, a fitness metaverse company building mobile games to gamify the fitness industry, which spun off from the company in August 2020.[10]

On 15 August 2018, Animoca Brands raised a $1 million investment from Sun Hung Kai and $0.5 million from strategic partner Lympo.[11] On 18 December 2018, Animoca Brands announced that it had completed a US$547,000 placement to institutional and sophisticated investors, a portion of which would be applied towards funding its investment in artificial intelligence accelerator Zeroth.ai.[12]

In May 2019, Animoca Brands raised $2.5 million to fund the development of a blockchain version of the video game The Sandbox, where players can build and monetize their gaming experiences using SAND, the platform’s utility token.[13] Then, in March 2019, Animoca Brands raised another $2.01 million in cash and cryptocurrency for The Sandbox from investors that included Square Enix, B Cryptos, and True Global Ventures.[14]

On 9 March 2020, Animoca Brands delisted from the Australian Securities Exchange.[6]

In September 2020, Animoca Brands launched the blockchain racing ERC-20 utility token "REVV" on Uniswap, which was subsequently listed on various other exchanges.[15]

In May 2021 Animoca Brands raised a first tranche of US$88,888,888[16] followed in July 2021 by the second tranche of US$50 million, both of which were based on valuation of US$1 billion.[17][18] In October 2021 Animoca Brands raised $65 million at a valuation of $2.2 billion from Ubisoft, Sequoia Capital and others.[19][20] In November 2021, SoftBank led a $93 million investment in Animoca Brands' The Sandbox.[21]

In December 2021, Binance and Animoca Brands launched a $200 million investment program to offer funding for blockchain games.[22]

On March 15, 2022, Animoca Brands announced it would shut down the F1 Delta Time game the next day.[23][24] The game had previously been lucrative, holding the record for the most expensive NFT of 2019 and with some transactions exceeding US$300,000. Sales within the game had flat-lined for the two years preceding the game's closure. The company announced plans to replace the game's non-functional NFTs with equivalent tokens for REVV Racing, a separate game which doesn't have Formula 1 branding.[24][25]

On 21 June 2022, Animoca Brands Corporation Limited was convicted on charges of failing to lodge annual and half-yearly financial reports with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.[26]

In July 2022, Animoca Brands hit $5.9 billion valuation.[27] In August 2022, Temasek with GGV Capital led a $110 million funding round for Animoca Brands at a $6 billion valuation to make it “pre-IPO ready”.[28][29][30]

Notable projects and games include:

Phantom Galaxies, REVV Motorsport, Mocaverse,The Sandbox, GAMEE,[31] Benji Bananas, TinyTap,[32] Crazy Defense Heroes, nWay, Notre Game[33] (founded in 2016), Quidd, Animoca Brands Japan, Pixowl, and Be Media.[34]

Animoca Brands has also licensed games and applications for: The Addams Family,[35] Atari,[36] Care Bears,[37] Fan Controlled Football,[38] Formula E,[39] Manchester City FC,[40] MotoGP,[41] Snoop Dogg,[42] Wonder Park,[43] Marvel,[44] Power Rangers,[45] and the WWE.[46] Former licenses include Formula One.[47][24]

• www.animocabrands.com