In a Twitter Spaces interview, Yat Siu, the chair of the Hong Kong-based company Animoca Brands, said that the company is now looking to fund close to $1 billion for Animoca Capital this quarter.
Animoca Brands Corp. has severely scaled back its aims in light of the recent collapse of the cryptocurrency market and is now only looking to raise roughly $1 billion this quarter for its new Web3 and metaverse investment fund. It has cut in half the amount that Animoca Brands wanted to raise for a brand-new investment vehicle for the web3 and metaverse.
According to co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu in an interview with Nikkei, Animoca Brands was launching a $2 billion fund on December 30 to invest in businesses in the metaverse. Yat Siu also noted that the fund's focus will only be on digital property rights.
Yat Siu, co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands, was quoted as saying that Animoca Capital was in talks with potential investors and intended to use the funds to aid blockchain and metaverse businesses on January 5, 2023 by Bloomberg.
— Vlad Savov (@vladsavov) January 5, 2023
The statement comes as the cryptocurrency market is still recuperating from Fried's FTX fall in November, which stunned Sam Bankman. Over a dozen of Animoca's portfolio companies were affected, according to Siu.
"Q1 is the goal and then let’s see what happens, It is fair to say it’s a challenging market. But we have quite a bit of interest."
-Siu told Bloomberg of Animoca Capital’s plans
One of the most active Web3 investors is Animoca Brands. Along with investments, its subsidiaries include the metaverse game platforms The Sandbox, Blowfish Studios, Grease Monkey Games, and Eden Games. The company has made over 380 investments so far, which explains why there are so many tokens.
Animoca raised $544 million from investors in 2022, including Temasek, Boyu Capital, GGVCapital, and others. The funding aids Animoca's plans to establish the Open Metaverse and grant digital property rights to all internet users across the world.