Animoca Brands Corporation Ltd, the company advancing digital property rights for gaming and the open metaverse, announced on Monday it has received binding commitments for a funding round to accelerate Mocaverse, one of the company’s marquee projects.

Animoca Brands has raised $20 million (approximately A$31.3 million) via the issue of new ordinary shares at a price per share of A$4.50; as part of the raise, the company has granted to the investors in the round a free-attaching utility token warrant on a 1:1 dollar basis, according to a statement.

The funding round was led by CMCC Global, with other investors including Kingsway Capital, Liberty City Ventures, GameFi Ventures, Aleksander Larsen (founder of Sky Mavis), Gabby Dizon (founder of Yield Guild Games), institutional investors of Koda Capital, and others. Yat Siu, the executive chairman and co-founder of Animoca Brands is also participating in the round.

The new capital will be used to advance the Mocaverse project, including product development, facilitating Web3 adoption, and securing partnerships to expand the gaming, culture and entertainment ecosystem of Animoca Brands’ portfolio of approximately 450 investments in Web3 companies and projects.

Mocaverse is building Web3-native tooling to empower products in gaming, culture, and entertainment verticals, allowing users to create their own digital identity, accrue reputation, earn and spend loyalty points, and use their digital identity to access the Mocaverse ecosystem, seeded by Animoca Brands’ 450+ portfolio companies and partner network with over 700 million addressable users.

CMCC Global is one of Asia’s first venture capital companies focused solely on blockchain and Web3 investments. CMCC Global has an enviable record of investing early in leading projects such as Ethereum (ETH) at $7, Solana (SOL) at $0.20 and Cosmos (ATOM) at $0.10. CMCC Global has reached an asset under management (AUM) of over $500 million across its funds and is known as a high-conviction investor. Today the company has offices in Asia, North America and Europe and operates several funds with different strategies including the CMCC Global Digital Asset Fund, the Titan Fund and Crest.

Yat Siu, the co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, commented: “We are deeply honoured by investors’ support for Animoca Brands and its vision of decentralisation. The ongoing evolution of the Internet involves a shift from hierarchical power structures to autonomous ones, and the DAO-based approach of Mocaverse ensures that its community will be focused on driving innovation and collaboration across the broader Animoca Brands ecosystem. In addition to empowering users to participate in a vibrant community that generates new economic opportunities, Mocaverse will also serve as the digital identity, reputation, and loyalty system for other decentralised organisations.”

Martin Baumann, the co-founder of CMCC Global, said: “The project will unify the unique portfolio of companies within the Animoca Brands umbrella and will become a portal for hundreds of millions of new users to access Web3 and metaverse ecosystems.”

According to the statement, Animoca Brands is issuing Simple Agreements for Future Equity (SAFEs) with various sophisticated and professional investors to raise a total of $20 million (approximately. A$31.3 million) at the price of A$4.50 per share. The SAFEs will be automatically converted to ordinary shares after six months. The number of new shares to be issued will be determined by the AUD:USD exchange rate at the time of settlement.

The company’s number of current outstanding fully paid ordinary shares is 1,910,074,127. As part of the raise, the company has granted to participating investors a free-attaching utility token warrant (at a nominal price) on a 1:1 dollar basis with a 30-month vesting schedule.

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