Animoca Brands has raised funding at a more than $5B valuation, triple where it was in October

techcrunch.com:

Animoca Brands, an eight-year-old, 600-person Hong Kong-based outfit that has managed to put its stamp on many of the world’s most popular NFT and metaverse brands, has raised roughly $360 million in fresh funding at a valuation of more than $5 billion, the company announced today.

It’s a big leap from the $2.2 billion valuation the company was assigned in October when it raised a $65 million round. The number is even more notable considering that Animoca was valued at $1 billion in an $138 million round that closed as recently as July.

According to a spokesperson for the firm, the capital raise involved the issue of 111,173,515 new shares of Animoca Brands, which investors bought from Animoca Brands at the equivalent of $3.24 per share in a “pretty standard equity-based raise.” It’s a notable feature of the raise, given that Animoca — which previously traded on the Australian Securities Exchange and was delisted in March of 2020 because “it didn’t like the fact that we were dealing with crypto,” Animoca founder Yat Siu recently told us — now operates as an unlisted public company. That means it can communicate with shareholders via its own site and mailing lists, and that its roughly 2,500 shareholders can sell their shares privately to other individuals. (You just have to know who owns some.)

A peek into web3 power player Animoca Brands

“Secondary placement of shares is occurring because there was high demand that could not be fulfilled in the primary placement,” added the spokesperson, “however secondary placement is not considered part of this capital raise and any sums exchanged via secondary sales do not count toward the company’s finances.”

Liberty City Ventures — and earlier investor in Animoca — led the new round,