Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong-based metaverse company focused on nonfungible tokens and gaming, today announced it raised a hefty $358.9 million in its fourth funding round since May at a pre-money valuation of more than $5 billion.

The round was led by Liberty City Ventures with participation from 10T Holdings, C Ventures, Delta Fund, Gemini Frontier Fund, Soros Fund Management, Winklevoss Capital and numerous others.

Animoca is heavily invested in growing NFTs, which are crypto assets recorded on blockchains that represent the ownership of virtual items. The company has been investing in and building metaverse-related gaming projects that incorporate digital property for online users using decentralized web3 technology, which uses blockchain as infrastructure.

NFTs allow players direct ownership of in-game items as virtual assets and create real-world economies. Animoca’s mission is to use these assets to build the future for what is called GameFi, which includes “play-to-earn” game models where players earn crypto game assets as they play. As NFTs are interoperable assets that can be traded outside the game for other cryptocurrencies and traditional money, such as dollars, they have given rise to a sizable market.

As of today, the global videogame market is estimated at $180 billion, according to a Newzoo report, with more than 3 billion players. The metaverse market size, including asset marketplaces and mixed reality, reached $47.7 billion in 2020 and is forecast to reach $828 billion by 2028, according to a report from analyst firm Emergen Research.

“We have set ourselves the ambitious goals of building an open web3 and facilitating an open metaverse that expands financial inclusion,” said Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands. “In 2021 we saw tremendous growth in this space and Animoca Brands has been one of the forefront leaders in the development of this industry.”

One of Animoca’s metaverse game projects, The Sandbox, allows players to purchase virtual land in a 3D virtual world as an NFT. This means that players can personally own their plot of land in the game and earn cryptocurrency from their activity in the game. The land in the game can go for considerable prices, especially because celebrities have been buying up virtual land and, according to Rolling Stone, one person paid $450,000 to be Snoop Dog’s neighbor.

In 2021, NFT markets and game platforms attracted a great deal of venture capital interest, especially GameFi. One of the biggest rounds went to Forte, a blockchain technology infrastructure platform provider for game companies, which raised $725 million in November. NFT marketplaces OpenSea, MakersPlace, Mintable and Rarible each raised funding rounds to expand their platforms to allow the trade of different types of digital goods.

A new report from blockchain analytics company Chainalysis Inc. cited that the NFT market reached $41 billion in value during 2021. This is nearly double what DappRadar estimated for this year at $22 billion. The report also shows how explosive the year was for NFTs, which started out in 2020 with a market of $100 million.

“We believe we are still at the initial stages of a new internet revolution, and there are tremendous opportunities ahead of us in 2022 and beyond,” added Siu.

Animoca said that it intends to use the new capital to fund strategic acquisitions, further investments in NFT and metaverse companies, product development and the purchase of licenses of popular intellectual properties.

Photo: Animoca Brands