Web3 Company Animoca Brands Lowers Fundraising Goal to $1 Billion in Q1 2023

Animoca Brands, a Web3 gaming-focused company, has announced it is now targeting a raise of $1 billion for a fund directed to inject help for already established blockchain projects. The number is significantly lower than the $2 billion the company announced back in November as an upper limit for this same fund.

Animoca Brands, one of the most popular Web3 gaming and blockchain companies, has made a new announcement regarding its fundraising goals for Q1 2023. Yat Siu, a co-founder of the company, recently stated in a Twitter Spaces chat it was looking to raise $1 billion from various parties for a fund provisionally called Animoca Capital, which would focus its activities on supporting already established Web3 projects.

This number is significantly lower than the goal Siu established back in November when he first revealed plans to launch this fund, declaring that Animoca Brands expected to raise up to $2 billion. At the time, Siu acknowledged the challenge that raising that amount of funds would represent, with the demise of FTX having recently shaken the cryptocurrency world.

Siu declared that this event affected a dozen of the projects in Animoca Brands’ portfolio, with the backlash affecting the broader cryptocurrency market.

However, even with these events hampering the state of the crypto and Web3 market, Animoca Brands is optimistic about the outcome of this endeavor. On the subject of reaching the newly announced goal, Siu explained:

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.

However, as in November, Siu did not disclose investors interested in supporting this fund. The fund is to be focused on investing in late-stage Web3 gaming and metaverse projects, which are considered less risky than putting money on nascent startups.

Animoca Brands still has no plans for fundraising for itself this year. Data coming from corporative releases indicates it had more than $200 million in cash and around $940 million in cryptocurrencies considered liquid as part of its reserves by November. In July, the company raised $75 million, reaching a valuation of $5.9 billion.

More recently, in September, Animoca secured $110 million in a round led by Temasek, a Singapore-owned VC company, Boyu Capital, and GGV Capital.

What do you think about the new goal announced by Animoca Brands for its Web3 fund? Tell us in the comments section below.