The Sandbox
- Animoca Brands raised $358 million in a funding round valuing the company at $5 billion.
- The metaverse developer got buy-in from Soros Fund Management and the Winklevoss twins.
- Animoca is invested in more than 150 NFT-related companies, like CryptoKitties owner Dapper Labs.
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Metaverse company Animoca Brands more than doubled its valuation after a $358 million funding round backed by the Winklevoss twins and Soros Fund Management.
In a Tuesday press release, Animoca Brands, which is the majority owner of the popular metaverse game the Sandbox, said it's now worth about $5 billion. A previous funding round in October last year valued the company at about $2.2 billion, Bloomberg reported.
Liberty City Ventures led the recent fundraise with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss' venture capital firm and the hedge fund founded by billionaire investor George Soros taking part. L2 Capital and 10T Holdings, among others, also participated, the statement said.
The company said it will use the funds for acquisitions, product development, and licenses for intellectual property.
Animoca brands is focused on the booming market of non-fungible tokens and the virtual gaming world known as the metaverse. The company is invested in more than 150 NFT-related businesses, including metaverse-game Axie Infinity, NFT-marketplace OpenSea, and CryptoKitties-maker Dapper Labs, among others.
Property sales in the up-and-coming metaverse — a virtual reality where people interact as digital avatars to play games, buy land, and shop — have boomed in the last year. One company bought a plot of land in the Sandbox for $4.3 million in 2021, for example.
Digital properties aren't the only fast-growing digital asset. The market for NFTs, or digital art tied to the blockchain, swelled to more than $41 billion in 2021, according to one estimate from blockchain data company Chainalysis.