Animoca Brands: How a big bet on blockchain and NFTs minted Hong Kong’s latest unicorn
- Animoca Brands’ private valuation has surged tenfold to US$1 billion on the back of increased interest in non-fungible tokens
- Co-founder has pivoted Animoca towards becoming a platform that can charge trade commissions on secure in-game transactions
When the Australian Stock Exchange (ASE) gave Animoca Brands, one of Hong Kong’s leading gaming companies, an ultimatum last March, co-founder and chairman Yat Siu faced a tough choice: give up on his vision of the future or face delisting.
At that time, almost no one had heard of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), units of data stored on a blockchain that guarantees a digital asset to be unique. Siu was betting big on this new technology – used to represent and authenticate all things digital from weapons in a game to a digital painting – even at the risk of scaring investors and regulators.
The ASE warned Animoca Brands about governance, personnel and non-compliance issues as it pushed deeper into cryptocurrency activities – ultimately resulting in a March 2020 delisting. Animoca Brands said at the time it did all it could to fight the action, claiming it presented a “thorough and detailed case”.
More than a year later, the company’s private valuation has surged tenfold to US$1 billion on the back of increasing global interest in NFTs, opening the door for Animoca Brands to become one of Hong Kong’s few unicorns last month when it raised US$88 million in its biggest capital infusion since it was delisted.
“[Delisting in Australia] was one of the sacrifices and struggles we had … But you could call it a blessing in disguise,” Siu said with a smile on his face in a recent interview with the South China Morning Post.
Sitting in Animoca Brands’ office in Cyberport, Hong Kong’s snazzy tech and start-up district, the energetic 48-year-old who still dresses like a young Silicon Valley entrepreneur with hoodies and trainers, said he feels a sense of self-validation after everything that has happened, especially now that NFTs are gaining mainstream attention.
Born and raised in Vienna to a musical family from Hong Kong and Taiwan, Siu was a programming whiz who got his first job at the iconic gaming company Atari in Austria when he was still a teenager at school.