NFT Creator Animoca’s Funding Round Nears $500M With KKR Involvement

Private equity company KKR & Co. is in talks to join the latest fundraising round for Hong Kong-based metaverse gaming company Animoca Brands Corp., bringing the effort near $500 million and the company’s pre-money valuation to $5 billion, insiders told Bloomberg Wednesday (Feb. 9).

Animoca raised $359 million in its first funding round in January, led by investors including George Soros and the Winklevoss twins. Animoca has doubled its valuation in the past three months and told its existing investors the company might be valued at $10 billion in another funding round later this year.

Representatives with KKR and Animoca declined to comment.

Related: Metaverse Gaming Firm Animoca Raises $360M

Animoca’s January funding round was led by Liberty City Ventures, with participation from Gemini Frontier Fund, Sequoia China and Winklevoss Capital. The company issued 111 million shares and is using the money for acquisitions and investments, and to develop products and purchase intellectual property licenses.

The company invests in and builds online virtual worlds, where users can purchase assets — land, accessories, etc. — in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), including The Sandbox, one of the two biggest metaverses in the crypto world.

The Sandbox’s SAND token saw a surge in its value after Adidas referenced a partnership with the company last year, and also jumped when Facebook announced it was changing its name to Meta.

Also read: Activision Blizzard Earnings Show the Metaverse in Gaming’s Future

Last week, gaming giant Activision Blizzard’s ATVI stock was up 17% before its fourth-quarter results were announced, thanks to news that Microsoft had agreed to purchase it for $68.7 billion.

Meanwhile, NFT developer Immutable X saw its native cryptocurrency token, IMX, more than double on Thursday (Feb. 3) after it announced a deal to build an NFT marketplace for GameStop — which announced that it was also creating a $100 million grant fund for metaverse developers, presumably in the gaming sphere.

Metaverse game developer Roblox is seeing 1 in 5 of its 42 million players update their avatars daily with NFT accessories, Morgan Stanley noted recently.