Animoca Brands raises additional $100 million
Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek is reportedly joining a $100 million funding round for blockchain investor Animoca Brands, adding to the nearly $435 million Animoca has raised since January.
Temasek will lead the financing, which adds to a funding round that has already seen Animoca raise $359 million in January and another $75 million earlier this summer, according to a Bloomberg report citing unnamed sources.
Temasek invests in service providers in the crypto space, rather than investing in crypto itself, and Animoca has bought stakes in 340 financial, gaming and social media companies over the past five years and continues to do so during the crypto downturn, according to the report.
Once a small mobile game publisher, Animoca is now Asia’s largest blockchain investor, and its core business is selling crypto tokens, according to the report.
As Reuters reported on January 18, early in the funding round, Animoca Brands said it would use the money raised at the time for acquisitions and investments and to develop products and buy intellectual property licenses.
See also: Metaverse gaming company Animoca raises $360 million
“Animoca Brands has built and developed leading brands in the decentralized gaming and metaverse space,” Tyler Winklevoss, founder of Winklevoss Capital and Gemini, which participated in the funding round, said at the time, according to the report. “We have tremendous conviction in its vision and are excited to support its mission.”
As PYMNTS noted on August 18, Animoca Brands was an early investor in CryptoKitties, the game that first brought non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to the public’s attention, and Animoca has expanded significantly since then.
Read more: Showbiz, Gaming Execs Try to monetize new NFT use cases
The company is now the largest investor in blockchain projects in Asia, according to Bloomberg, and one of those projects is Axie Infinity, a play-to-earn crypto game that is by far the most successful NFT project of any kind, according to DappRadar.
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