The Sandbox, a decentralized gaming virtual world and a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, announced Thursday it has acquired the Uruguayan company Cualit, a full-stack development technology firm experienced in gaming, to boost its Web3 and blockchain innovation and development capabilities.
The Sandbox said in a statement that it has had a close partnership with Cualit for over a year and will work with Martin and Frederico Perez, the two brothers who co-founded the company, to significantly boost the team’s growth through additional resources and infrastructure.
Cualit will become The Sandbox Uruguay, expanding The Sandbox global team and accelerating growth of its ambitious metaverse ecosystem.
Cualit has been instrumental in decentralizing the tech industry in Uruguay by applying blockchain frameworks and technologies to competitive projects over the past 10 years. It has built innovative digital experiences for leading brands, empowering digital transformation in the country and reinforcing its presence as an innovative hub for technology and software development.
In its new identity as The Sandbox Uruguay, the team will focus its efforts on accelerating development of The Sandbox.
With a quality education system and many prominent Fintech companies, The Sandbox said Uruguay is an ideal location for the company’s second development office in South America, alongside the existing Argentina development team responsible for the Game Client and Game Maker.
To further enhance The Sandbox Uruguay’s capabilities, The Sandbox plans to leverage local Web3 talent to increase the team’s size of approximately 90 technology professionals in the near future, boosting to 150 people in Latin America.
“Web3 technology is rapidly evolving and we believe The Sandbox Uruguay will help us to onboard millions of users through their expertise in web design and user flow. Uruguay is a fantastic place to invest in technology and we see a new generation of developers who want to rethink the way we are using and owning our data through the open metaverse,” said Arthur Madrid, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of The Sandbox.
The Sandbox Uruguay directors Martin and Frederico Perez said :“As The Sandbox Uruguay, we are empowered to raise a new hub of talent for all of Latin America, fueling growth for The Sandbox and the region. We look forward to rapidly expanding our team and taking our contribution to the metaverse to the next level with additional investment, resources, and shared learning across The Sandbox global team.”
Part virtual real estate, part amusement park, The Sandbox fully embraces the idea of the metaverse as a continuous shared digital space where worlds and heroes collide to make magic. It offers a rich, open metaverse driven by fun interactive experiences, a user-generated content (UGC) ecosystem that rewards creators with 95 percent of their proceeds, and a decentralized virtual economy.
The Sandbox is emerging as the first entertainment platform that combines a creator-driven, user-centric open metaverse with rich gaming and social experiences, true ownership, and licensed content from over 200 major brands including Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, The Rabbids, Gucci Vault, The Walking Dead, Snoop Dogg, Adidas, and many more.
These partnerships empower players to create their own experiences using both original and well-known characters and worlds, and the acquisition of Cualit is expected to enhance the onboarding of new partners and creators.
“The Sandbox Uruguay will add a technology-driven team to support the development of critical tools and infrastructure such as the Dashboard, the Marketplace, publishing tools, data analysis, and data flows that power The Sandbox platform. This acquisition will help us rapidly scale the play-and-earn adoption by our growing ecosystem of both partner brands and the UGC Creators Economy,” said Sebastien Borget, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of The Sandbox.
The Sandbox has over 3 million registered players and recently concluded its Season 2 Alpha that gave 330,000 players a chance to get an early look at the entertainment metaverse as it proceeds toward its full launch.