Temasek to lead US$100 million funding for crypto landlord Animoca

SINGAPORE state investor Temasek is joining a US$100 million funding for Animoca Brands, betting on one of crypto’s most prolific investment houses even after a US$2 trillion market meltdown.

Temasek will lead the financing through convertible bonds, said the people, asking not to be identified discussing private information. It adds to a funding round first announced by Animoca in January, they said, when the Hong Kong startup raised US$359 million from backers including George Soros and the Winklevoss twins. Now valued at US$6 billion, Animoca raised another US$75 million in the same round earlier this summer.

Temasek has said it doesn’t directly invest in cryptocurrencies and prefers to back service providers in the space instead. In February, the state fund joined a US$200 million funding for crypto lender Amber Group at a US$3 billion valuation. Animoca and Temasek spokespeople declined to comment.

Animoca has evolved from a small mobile game publisher to Asia’s biggest blockchain investor by assembling a portfolio of more than 340 finance, gaming, and social media companies in less than 5 years. Co-founder Yat Siu envisions challenging the dominance of Big Tech firms like Meta Platforms and Microsoft by building virtual worlds on the blockchain, creating the so-called Web3 in the process.

The crypto winter, which has wiped out US$2 trillion in digital asset value since November, has left most investors reeling. Funding for digital currency-related startups fell 26 per cent last quarter from the one before, and it’s on pace to fall further still in the current period, according to PitchBook data.

Animoca, for its part, is seeking to take advantage of the crypto downturn to buy up stakes in industry players and digital tokens, Siu said in a recent interview. The firm wants to go public, perhaps in the next two to three years. That will depend on the market’s acceptance of its core business of selling crypto tokens and taking a cut from secondary transactions, Siu said.

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Animoca’s capital raise hasn’t been entirely smooth. Buyout giant KKR & Co was among prospective backers who decided to withdraw from its funding round after the market rout, Bloomberg News reported in July. BLOOMBERG