The Sandbox Parent Animoca to Debut Metaverse Fund of $2 Billion

Animoca Brands, the parent body of The Sandbox metaverse, is ready to dive deeper into the virtual universe sector. The Hong Kong-based blockchain firm is planning to unveil a mega-fund of $2 billion (roughly Rs. 16,260 crore), dedicated to the metaverse business. Animoca co-founder and Executive Chairman, Yat Siu, spoke about the ideas for the fund during a recent interview while speaking about the company's plans for 2023. The metaverse technology has been gaining a lot of investments in the recent times.

The fund pool is intended to accelerate the development of immersive metaverse projects and create a genuine, active market. As of now, Animoca has not raised the whopping amount.

As per Nikkei Asia's report, Sui is aware that the ongoing crypto market slump may not be the ideal time to raise the hefty funding, however, he remains hopeful that the markets would jump back to health soon again.

"More people are joining crypto every day, especially in gaming," Sui was quoted as saying.

Animoca's metaverse gaming project The Sandbox shot to fame for offering virtual land plots to the players, who can choose to decorate their properties with NFTs and host guests as well as virtual events.

"The long-term goal for us, and frankly for myself, is creating a way where we all have digital property rights. I'm hoping that this will also drive a scenario where digital property will be recognised like physical property in the legal system,” Sui added.

Animoca has been trying to make metaverse-related development and activities interoperable among separate platforms. To achieve this, the firm launched a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) called the Open Metaverse Alliance for Web3 (OMA3) in July this year.

Research reports suggest that there is a market opportunity for the metaverse to reach $800 billion (roughly Rs. 59,58,700 crore) over the next two years.

In the backdrop of this promising future, the metaverse sector has been bagging funds in several parts of the world.

For instance, in February, Seoul's Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning of South Korea allocated KRW 223.7 billion (roughly Rs. 1,400 crore) towards the development of a national metaverse project.

Later in March, chipmaker Qualcomm set aside a fund of $100 million (roughly Rs. 760 crore), called the Snapdragon Metaverse Fund, hoping to accelerate the development of Extended Reality technology.

Metaverse also reeled-in a $30 million (roughly Rs. 240 crore) funding from Invesco, an investment management giant headquartered in Atlanta, US, in August this year.

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