Animoca Brands Corporation Ltd has raised US$75.32 million from the second tranche of a capital raising to advance its vision of an open metaverse environment.
The company will use the new capital to continue to fund strategic acquisitions, investments and product development, secure licences for popular intellectual properties and advance the open metaverse, including through its efforts to promote digital property rights for online users.
Using technologies including blockchain and NFTs, Animoca is working to deliver true digital ownership of users’ virtual assets and data, enabling various DeFi and GameFi opportunities (including play-and-earn), asset interoperability and an open framework that can lead to greater equitability for all participants in the open metaverse.
“True digital ownership”
Commenting on the capital raise, Animoca co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu said: “Digital property rights represent a society-defining generational shift that impacts everyone online and will set the stage for the emergence of the open metaverse.
“We are deeply honoured to continue to enjoy strong support from investors as we work to solidify the leadership position of Animoca Brands in the Web3 industry and the field of true digital ownership.”
Capital raise summary
Animoca has executed subscription agreements with sophisticated and professional investors to raise a total of US$75.32 million (approximately A$104.57 million) at a subscription price of A$4.50 per share, for a total of 23,237,058 new shares.
Following this raise, the company will have a total of 1,836,142,334 fully paid ordinary shares on issue.
Prominent investors
Investors in the current tranche included Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, Alpha Wave Ventures, 10T, SG Spring Limited Partnership Fund, Generation Highway Ltd, Cosmic Summit Investments Limited and others.
Liberty City Ventures managing partner Emil Woods said: “Over the next decade, humanity will discover and embrace the game-changing power that blockchain based digital ownership of assets will bring to countless aspects of daily life.
“We are proud to support Animoca Brands, a highly talented team of visionaries and builders at the forefront of this movement to embrace and fulfil the promise of Web3.”
Kingsway Capital founder and CEO Manuel Stotz said: "The genie of digital property rights has been let out of the bottle and the Internet users engaging with this revolutionary technology will not be returning to the digital servitude that is common in Web 2.0.
“The long-term growth trajectory of NFTs and similar ownership technology is extraordinarily steep, especially in emerging markets.
“We are thrilled to grow our continuing partnership with Animoca Brands, who earned its stripes by emerging from the previous crypto winter of 2018-2019 with a much larger and stronger business."