Web3 Investor Animoca Brands Targets Agentic AI with Guardrails, Group President Says

Known as a pioneer from gaming to blockchain, Animoca Brands oversees a portfolio of about 600 companies from its headquarters in Hong Kong. It’s an international business with significant interests in Asia, the Middle East and the US and counts as much as one third of portfolio companies as "undomiciled," according to Group President Evan Auyang. 

"We're not really focused on Web3 gaming per se right now," Auyang told Sandmark in an interview on the sidelines of the Consensus Miami conference. "We've sided a lot towards agentic AI."

AI shift

The firm, co-founded by Executive Chairman Yat Siu, has been investing more heavily in AI-related companies for the past two years, particularly at the intersection of AI and blockchain, according to Auyang. In keeping with the company's usual practices, he declined to disclose deal sizes or details of the investment pipeline.

Animoca Brands doesn't have a set amount planned to allocate to companies involved in agentic systems. It will be "large" but not the majority of this year's investment allocation, he said.

Investors are monitoring Agentic trends to try to predict how businesses will manage, for better or worse, when more actions are conducted via agents – where autonomous software performs tasks, makes decisions and interacts with digital services on behalf of users. Blockchain-focused sectors such as crypto are particularly advanced, with industry celebrities and newcomer startups highlighting how the future of trading is about AI agents interacting with each other, leaving humans strictly in a strategic and decision-making role in the background.

Animoca Brands believes in having multiple agents interact with the blockchain via digital wallets. But humans should make the final decisions on what to buy and sell, and where to store funds.

"It's bad if you don't put any guardrails on it," Auyang said, without being more specific. "It can be very positive if you do, if you guide it in the right way."

He continued: "There would be danger in AI if it were all centralized… We're already at a point in the social media age where tech companies have become so powerful that they actually hold influence over individual governments." The impact of AI will depend on how the companies involved are shaped going forward, he said.

Capital platform

Animoca Brands was the subject of speculation last year about whether it would tap public markets through an IPO. Instead, it's in exclusive talks with Currenc Group (CURR) for a reverse merger – a process in which Nasdaq-listed Currenc, itself a provider of AI-assisted financial solutions, would acquire the entire equity interest of Animoca Brands.

Beyond the AI realm, Animoca Brands is also focusing on real-world assets and stablecoin investments, as well as its advisory services arm, said Auyang. He questioned whether people will find the services of TradFi giants such as Citi and JPMorgan in future compared with digital-only neobanks.

Reflecting on an earlier conference panel session meant to unearth the next stages of RWA tokenization, Auyang said the banks' viewpoint was a "nuts and bolts" operational standpoint and not "visionary" enough. Asset managers such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Wellington "are miles ahead of the banks" at the intersection of TradFi and crypto, he said.

Auyang, who himself worked in Citi’s derivatives structuring and marketing practice in the 1990s, said he first met Animoca Brands's Yat Siu through YPO, an organization that describes itself as a "global leadership community of over 38,000 extraordinary chief executives." 

Together, they look for 'Series A' early-stage seed investments where founders might already have discovered some product market fit. The firm also recently introduced a $10mn development fund for early-stage ventures using its Minds platform, a system designed to support persistent AI agents.

(Note: we corrected an earlier version of this story that misspelt Evan Auyang's name as Auyung).