Animoca Brands, an NFT and metaverse service, raises $359M led by Liberty City at a $5B valuation, up from $2.2B in October 2021
Soros Fund Management and the Winklevoss twins' venture capital firm are among investors in a funding round that's more than doubled the valuation of Animoca Brands Corp. …
Context & Ripple Effects
Animoca had already moved from a $1B valuation in its May NFT-game financing to a $2.2B valuation in October, as it built around players owning and transferring in-game items. This round marks a much larger capital commitment to that ownership-focused model, with Liberty City leading and Soros Fund Management and the Winklevoss-backed firm participating.
The subsequent coverage frames the January financing as the core of a larger round: a second tranche later lifted Animoca's valuation to $5.9B. That makes the $359M announcement an inflection point in the company's ability to fund both Web3 gaming operations and blockchain investments.
First-order effects
- Animoca Brands gains $359M and a $5B valuation, giving it substantially more financial capacity than in its October round to pursue its NFT and metaverse strategy.
- Liberty City, Soros Fund Management, and the Winklevoss-backed venture firm become investors in a company positioning player ownership as an alternative to platform-controlled virtual goods.
Second-order effects
- The valuation reset raises the capital bar for other NFT-game and metaverse companies seeking to compete for investors and partners against Animoca's better-funded portfolio strategy.
- The later second tranche shows that the January round could be expanded rather than treated as a one-off raise, concentrating more financing behind Animoca's blockchain-gaming thesis.
Third-order effects
- If financing continues to cluster around a small group of Web3 gaming investors and operators, control over which virtual-property projects reach scale may shift toward capital allocators such as Animoca rather than individual game studios.
- The round points to a contest between platform-controlled digital economies and ownership-based game ecosystems, where sustained access to private capital determines which model can build distribution and inventories of virtual assets.
The trend: Web3 gaming is becoming a capital-intensive platform contest, with large private rounds funding companies that pair game development with investment in virtual-property ecosystems.