Animoca Brands (Animoca Brands Corporation Ltd) is a

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

-based game

software company A software company is a company whose primary products are various forms of software, software technology, distribution, and software product development. They make up the software industry. Types There are a number of different types of softw ...

and

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

company founded in 2014 by

Yat Siu Yat Siu (Chinese: 蕭逸; born 1973) is a Hong Kong-based entrepreneur and angel investor, who was born and raised in Vienna, Austria. Early years Yat Siu's mother, who was from Taiwan and was born in Lisbon, Portugal, conducted for an orchest ...

. It was listed on the

Australian Securities Exchange Australian Securities Exchange Ltd or ASX, is an Australian public company that operates Australia's primary securities exchange, the Australian Securities Exchange (sometimes referred to outside of Australia as, or confused within Australia as ...

from 23 January 2015 to 9 March 2020.

Notable properties

Games owned by the company include: * '' Power Rangers: Legacy Wars'', '' Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid'' * '' Projection: First Light'' Animoca Brands has also licensed games and applications for:

The Addams Family ''The Addams Family'' is a fictional family created by American cartoonist Charles Addams. They originally appeared in a series of 150 unrelated single-panel cartoons, about half of which were originally published in ''The New Yorker'' over a ...

Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc. (1972–1992), Atari, Inc., ...

Care Bears Care Bears are multi-colored bears, originally painted in 1981 by artist Elena Kucharik to be used on greeting cards from American Greetings. In 1983, the characters were turned into plush teddy bears. The characters headlined their own televisi ...

Fan Controlled Football Fan Controlled Football (FCF) is a professional 7-on-7 Indoor football league created in 2017 as the first sports league controlled by fans. All games are played at the Pullman Yards in Atlanta, Georgia and broadcast on Twitch, NBCLX, DAZN, ...

Formula E Formula E, officially the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, is a single-seater motorsport championship for electric cars. The series was conceived in 2011 in Paris by FIA president Jean Todt and Spanish businessman Alejandro Agag, who is ...

Manchester City FC Manchester City Football Club are an English football club based in Manchester that competes in the Premier League, the top flight of English football. Founded in 1880 as St. Mark's (West Gorton), they became Ardwick Association Football ...

MotoGP Grand Prix motorcycle racing is the premier class of motorcycle road racing events held on road circuits sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM). Independent motorcycle racing events have been held since the start ...

Snoop Dogg Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. (born October 20, 1971), known professionally as Snoop Dogg (previously Snoop Doggy Dogg and briefly Snoop Lion), is an American rapper. His fame dates back to 1992 when he featured on Dr. Dre's debut solo single, " ...

Wonder Park ''Wonder Park'' is a 2019 computer-animated adventure comedy film produced by Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Movies, with Ilion Animation Studios handling animation. The plot follows a young girl who encounters a real version of her magica ...

, and the

WWE World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., d/b/a as WWE, is an American professional wrestling promotion. A global integrated media and entertainment company, WWE has also branched out into other fields, including film, American football, and vario ...

. Former licenses include

Formula One Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...

. Animoca Brands' has over 390 cryptocurrency-related holdings, this include

Axie Infinity ''Axie Infinity'' is a non-fungible token-based online video game developed by Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis, known for its in-game economy which uses Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies. Players of Axie Infinity collect and mint NFTs which represent ...

OpenSea OpenSea is an American online non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace headquartered in New York City. The company was founded by Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah in 2017. OpenSea offers a marketplace allowing for non-fungible tokens to be sold directl ...

Dapper Labs Venrock (portmanteau of Venture and Rockefeller) is a venture capital firm formed in 1969 to build upon the successful investing activities of the Rockefeller family that began in the late 1930s. It has offices in Palo Alto, California, New York ...

and

CryptoKitties ''CryptoKitties'' is a blockchain game on Ethereum developed by Canadian studio Dapper Labs, a company spun-off from Axiom Zen, that allows players to purchase, collect, breed and sell virtual cats. It is one of the earliest attempts to deploy bloc ...

. Animocas portfolio investments is worth $1.5 billion in crypto and blockchain gaming across 390 companies.

History

2022 - Auto-Tech & TalkRobot LS7 1675 (52476255662)

On November 15, 2011, mobile games developer Animoca raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a

Series A round A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

led by

Intel Capital Intel Capital is a division of Intel Corporation, set up to manage corporate venture capital, global investment, mergers and acquisitions. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies offering hardware, so ...

and IDG-Accel (which tapped its China Growth Fund III). In 2014 Animoca Brands was spun out from Animoca, and the new entity listed on the

in January 2015. In March 2018, Animoca Brands launched OliveX which builds mobile games to gamify the fitness industry. On 15 August 2018, Animoca Brands raised a $1 million investment from Sun Hung Kai and $0.5 million from strategic partner Lympo. 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. In May 2019, Animoca Brands raised $2.5 million to fund the development of a blockchain version of the video game '' The Sandbox'' based on

user-generated content User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is any form of content, such as images, videos, text, testimonials, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms such as social media, discussion f ...

. Then, in March 2019, Animoca Brands raised another $2.01 million in cash and cryptocurrency for The Sandbox from investors that included

Square Enix is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational holding company, production enterprise and entertainment conglomerate, best known for its ''Final Fantasy'', ''Dragon Quest'', ''Star Ocean'' and ''Kingdom Hearts'' role-playing video game ...

, B Cryptos, and True Global Ventures. On 9 March 2020, Animoca Brands delisted from the

. In September 2020 Animoca Brands launched the blockchain racing

ERC-20 Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (Abbreviation: ETH; sign: Ξ) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capita ...

utility token "REVV" on

Uniswap Uniswap is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that uses a set of smart contracts (liquidity pools) to execute trades on its exchange. It's an open source project and falls into the category of a DeFi product (Decentralized finance) because i ...

, which was subsequently listed on various other exchanges. In May 2021 Animoca Brands raised a first tranche of US$88,888,888 followed in July 2021 by the second tranche of US$50 million, both of which were based on valuation of US$1 billion. In October 2021 Animoca Brands raised $65 million at a valuation of $2.2 billion from

Ubisoft Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include '' Assassin's Creed'', ''Far Cry'', '' ...

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. , Sequoia's total a ...

and others. In November 2021

SoftBank is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...

led a $93 million investment in Animoca Brands' The Sandbox. In December 2021,

Binance Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange which is the largest exchange in the world in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. It was founded in 2017 and is registered in the Cayman Islands. Binance was founded by Changpeng Zhao, a deve ...

and Animoca Brands launched a $200 million investment program to offer funding for blockchain games. On March 15, 2022, Animoca Brands announced it would shut down the ''F1 Delta Time'' game the next day. The game had previously been lucrative, holding the record for most expensive

NFT A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the ...

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. In April 2022, Animoca Brands acquired the

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of t ...

-based

video game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...

Eden Games Eden Games (formerly known as Eden Studios) is a French video game developer based in Lyon, France, that mainly focuses on the development of racing video games. History The company was formed as a development group within Infogrames' European ...

. 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. In July 2022, Animoca Brands hits $5.9 billion valuation. In August 2022

Temasek Temasek (also spelt Temasik) is an early recorded name of a settlement on the site of modern Singapore. The name appears in early Malay and Javanese literature, and it is also recorded in Yuan and Ming Chinese documents as ''Danmaxi'' ( or ). ...

with

GGV Capital GGV Capital is a global venture capital firm that invests in seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Smart Tech sectors. The firm was established in 2000 in Singapore and Silicon Valley, ...

lead a $110 million funding round for Animoca Brands at a $6 billion valuation to make it “pre-IPO ready”. In December 2022, Animoca Brands acquired a majority stake in the music metaverse platform, Pixelynx. Pixelynx was founded in 2020 by two electronic music producers, Deadmau5 and Richie Hawtin.

References

External links

* {{url, https://www.animocabrands.com/ Video game publishers Venture capital firms Blockchains Companies formerly listed on the Australian Securities Exchange