Animoca Brands and its subsidiary Bacasable Global, known for operating The Sandbox metaverse platform, have secured $20 million through convertible promissory notes, valuing the company at $1 billion.
Investors have the option to convert these notes into equity. The funding round was led by Kingsway Capital, with participation from LG Tech Ventures and True Global Ventures. Holders of the promissory notes can convert them into Bacasable Global’s equity under the same terms as existing preference shares.
This funding round, which values the company at $1 billion, comes after The Sandbox initially planned to raise $400 million at a $4 billion valuation nearly two years ago. The funds raised will be used to expand the creator economy and support the upcoming launch of the decentralized mobile metaverse platform in 2025.
The Sandbox aims to introduce new social features, avatar skills, and enhancements to its Game Maker and VoxEdit 3D editing tools. The platform also plans to launch a new multiplayer rules system, set to go live in beta by late 2024 and released to the public in 2025.
Despite the bearish sentiment surrounding the metaverse, The Sandbox has experienced significant growth. Since the Alpha version was released in November 2023, over 1,000 user-generated experiences have been created, with 5.7 million user accounts connected to cryptocurrency wallets.
Yat Siu, co-founder of Animoca Brands, highlighted the importance of digital property rights in popular games like Minecraft and Roblox. He described The Sandbox as the next evolution of user-generated content games for the digital ownership era.
According to investment management firm McKinsey & Company, the metaverse economy is projected to reach $5 trillion by 2030. While major metaverse projects have struggled to gain traction post-bull run, The Sandbox has reported a significant increase in creators using its no-code Game Maker tool over the past year.
In contrast to Meta’s underperforming metaverse project, The Sandbox continues to attract new users and creators, positioning itself as a leader in the evolving metaverse landscape.