Sandbox, operated by Animoca Brands and Bacasable Global Limited, has raised $20 million at a $1 billion valuation to expand its creator economy and develop its decentralized mobile metaverse platform, set to launch in 2025. The funding round, led by Kingsway Capital, also included LG Tech Ventures and True Global Ventures. This investment follows a previous plan to raise $400 million at a $4 billion valuation. Sandbox aims to enhance its platform with new social features, avatar skills, and improved game-making tools, with a multiplayer rules system expected in beta later this year. Since its Alpha launch in November 2023, The Sandbox has seen significant growth, with over 1,000 user-generated experiences and 5.7 million user accounts linked to cryptocurrency wallets. The platform's success contrasts with other struggling metaverse projects post-bear market, highlighting its unique position in the digital ownership and user-generated content (UGC) space.

Animoca Brands and its subsidiary Bacasable Global Limited, which operates the popular metaverse platform Sandbox, have raised $20 million of convertible promissory notes at a valuation of $1 billion. The funding round was led by Kingsway Capital and included LG Tech Ventures and True Global Ventures. The holders of the promissory notes can convert them into Bacasable Global Limited’s equity at the same terms as existing preference shares. The latest funding round at a billion-dollar valuation comes nearly two years after Sandbox planned to raise $400 million at a $4 billion valuation . In its official announcement, Sandbox said that the latest funding round would be utilized toward expanding the creator economy and its decentralized mobile metaverse platform expected to launch in 2025. Among the most notable uses, Sandbox intends to add new social features and avatar skills, and upgrade its Game Maker and VoxEdit 3D editing tools. The metaverse platform promised to enhance gameplay options with its new multiplayer rules system, which is anticipated to go live in beta later this year and for general release in 2025. Since the Alpha version of The Sandbox went live in November 2023, over 1,000 user-generated experiences have been developed. The platform boasts 5.7 million user accounts linked to cryptocurrency wallets. Related: Nokia targets ‘broader potential of metaverse’ in 2030 strategy Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu said that many popular games, such as Minecraft and Roblox, with millions of daily users, don’t offer their users digital property rights. He added that The Sandbox represents “the evolution of UGC games for the age of digital ownership.” Investment management firm McKinsey projects a metaverse economy to grow to $5 trillion by 2030. However, despite the early hype around the concept that saw Facebook do a full brand revamp, pivoting the metaverse has failed to gain user traction post-bull run. A report indicated that Meta’s $1.2 billion metaverse project had a mere 38 daily users in 2022. While major metaverse projects struggle to gain traction following the bear market of 2022-23, Sandbox has reported the addition of over 330,000 unique creators who have downloaded The Sandbox's no-code Game Maker in the past 12 months. Magazine: Become a Bali crypto digital nomad like me: Here’s how 

Sandbox Secures $20M Funding at $1B Valuation to Boost Metaverse Platform