What is Animoca Brands?

In 1998, entrepreneur Yat Siu founded Outblaze, a company focused on the development of internet technologies such as e-mail, online messaging, and anti-spam services. Eventually, Outblaze changed its focus to mobile gaming, and it began to spin off new companies with more specific aims. Out of Outblaze came Animoca (Appionics Holdings Ltd.), which claimed to have developed more than 150 games and other apps for iOS and Android between January and November 2011, racking up more than 40 million downloads in total.

In 2014, Siu again spun out a new, Hong Kong-based company from parent Animoca—it would be called Animoca Brands. This new entity focused on developing and publishing original mobile games, and it also served as a publisher of third-party games in certain markets. With its new vision, Animoca Brands listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) in 2015. Up to this point, the company had rights to Jim Davis’ famous comic strip character Garfield, which drove much of its gaming activity, and it produced games involving other famous cartoons such as Astro Boy and Ultraman.

Since its origin, Siu’s ventures were always investors as much as—or even more than—they were developers of original content. In 2017, through an acquisition of a Canadian gaming studio, he and Animoca Brands found themselves to be shareholders of a new blockchain-based game: CryptoKitties. This sparked Siu’s interest in crypto projects, and soon he and Animoca invested in non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea, Sky Mavis (developer of Axie Infinity), and the Decentraland Metaverse. These all became extremely lucrative investments, but the thrust into the blockchain/ Crypto space was a point of contention with Australian regulators, and it resulted in Animoca’s delisting from the ASX.

In 2018, Animoca Brands acquired game developer Pixowl, who had already released two versions of its two-dimensional world building game called The Sandbox. With this acquisition and its interest in crypto, Animoca announced that the simple mobile game would become a blockchain-based 3D metaverse associated with its own token (SAND). Two years later, the company released a token to support the development of its new racing game, REVV, which was ultimately launched in 2021.

Meanwhile, the company continued its massive fundraising efforts, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars and claiming a nearly $6 billion valuation in 2022.

Animoca Brands’ products

Animoca Brands operates on two fronts. First, it focuses on blockchain-based products including gaming, metaverse, and NFTs. Often, these products overlap. For instance, consider a metaverse that uses NFTs to represent parcels of land, or, alternatively, consider a game that takes place within a metaverse.

Animoca also has a broad financial portfolio, acting as a venture capital company by investing in other businesses with similar concentrations. Some of the highlights of their gaming/metaverse and investment portfolios follow.

Blockchain gaming and metaverse

• The Sandbox – The Sandbox was one of the projects that launched the success of Animoca’s “Brand.” It originated as a mobile game but was converted into a token-supported multiplayer metaverse with parcels of land represented by NFTs. In 2021, one of these LANDs sold for $4.3 million.

• REVV Racing – This play-to-earn (P2E) car racing game can be found on Polygon and uses the REVV token as a medium of exchange, allowing gamers to purchase cars (as NFTs), enter races, and win rewards.

• Benji Bananas – Like The Sandbox, Benji Bananas was originally a mobile game. However, this Polygon-based P2E game involves using vines to swing through a forest and collect bananas (think Mario collecting coins).

• Phantom Galaxies – Animoca went to outer space to create this huge interplanetary metaverse game. Players can buy pilots, planets, and starfighters to go on quests and take part in space battles. It uses the ASTRAFER token.

Investments

Animoca Brands invests in hundreds of blockchain and blockchain-adjacent companies and products. Only a select few are included in the list below, but their wide reach is almost unmatched in the crypto space.

• Axie Infinity – A P2E blockchain game based on NFT collection of “axies” that can fight each other. Its developer is Sky Mavis, which has received major investment from Animoca.

• Yuga Labs –The creator of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, its sister NFT collections, and the metaverse tied to that intellectual property (IP).

• Dapper Labs – NFT giant that launched CryptoKitties and introduced the world to gamifying NFTs. This was one of Animoca’s first investments in the crypto space. Dapper also created the NBA Top Shots collection and the Flow blockchain to better support NFTs.

• OpenSea – The pioneer NFT marketplace. Opensea proceed nearly 90% of all NFT trading in January 2022 before other platforms started to eat into its market share.

• MoviePass – The subscription movie service that became popular in 2017-2018 but stopped operating only a year later. It relaunched in 2022, and Animoca led a seed funding round for the company—reportedly now with a web3 focus—in January 2023.

Animoca Brands essentials

• Animoca Brands began as a mobile game developer, but it narrowed that focus to blockchain and web3 efforts.

• Although Animoca’s breakout game was the metaverse project The Sandbox, it has also found success with other blockchain games such as P2E entries REVV Racing and Benji Bananas.

• An even larger part of Animoca’s business is its financial portfolio, as it is also a venture capital company that has invested in some of the largest blockchain, NFT, and web3 gaming projects like Axie Infinity, OpenSea, and more.