True Global Ventures, located in Singapore, has invested $10 million in The Sandbox, an open NFT metaverse platform.
In this Series B financing, The Sandbox, which is owned by worldwide game producer Animoca Brands, raised a total of US $93 million.
This round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, which was making its first investment in crypto assets. SCB 10X, Liberty City Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Kingsway Capital, LG Technology Ventures, Polygon Studios, and Samsung Next were among the investors.
True Global Ventures invested in The Sandbox through its TGV 4 Plus blockchain fund, which was established in 2019 and closed at $100 million in September.
The money will be used to improve The Sandbox’s platform as an entertainment destination where businesses, intellectual assets, and celebrities can connect with their fans through virtual experiences including games, live events, and social media.
Snoop Dogg, The Walking Dead, deadmau5, Atari, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Care Bears, The Smurfs, Shaun the Sheep, and Binance are among the companies that the company claims to have collaborated with.
The Sandbox began as a 2D metaverse game with over 40 million players worldwide when it was launched in 2012 by serial entrepreneurs Arthur Madrid (CEO) and Sebastien Borget (COO). Following the purchase of Animoca Brands in 2018, it created a metaverse based on the Ethereum blockchain. It provides gamers and producers with a decentralized and user-friendly platform for creating immersive 3D environments and game experiences, as well as safely storing, trading, and monetising them.
Since The Sandbox’s US $2 million investment round in 2019, True Global Ventures has been a stakeholder. It also owns Animoca Brands, a blockchain gaming and NFTs developer with a worldwide “play-to-earn” strategy.
True Global Ventures is a distributed ledger technology equity fund founded in 2010 by serial entrepreneurs-turned-investors and licensed by the Singapore Monetary Authority. It focuses on late-stage Series B and C blockchain firms in the entertainment, infrastructure, financial services, data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors.
TGV said it will invest in additional 10-20 firms with check sizes ranging from US $3 million to US $10 million after closing its US $100 million funds.
True Global Ventures also provides follow-on investments to its portfolio companies through its network of over 80 investment partners, which includes seasoned VC general partners, business angels, institutional investors, senior corporate leaders, and family offices.
Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Moscow, Stockholm, Paris, Warsaw, New York, San Francisco, and Vancouver are among the 20 places where the venture capital business has a presence. TGV believes that multi-metaverse systems built on Blockchain and NFTs will give genuine digital ownership of digital assets while also fostering interoperability, open standards, and transparency, as stated in its vision statement.
“These metaverses will have new types of distributed governance, where both large corporations and smaller communities will exist side by side more equitably,” the firm stated. “Many of these communities will be owned by the communities and creators themselves.”
Furthermore, the company stated that developments in this field will promote Web 3.0 adoption and deliver these technologies to the public for good change.
“We believe that positive virtual worlds, e.g., open, transparent, sustainable, will positively impact the real world.”
The TGV 4 Plus fund has also invested in Forge Global, a global market firm in secondary private markets; Canada Computational Unlimited, a Bitcoin mining company powered entirely by renewable energy; and QuantumRock, an artificial intelligence asset management platform, in addition to The Sandbox and Animoca Brands.
