Former Tencent insurance boss joins web3 powerhouse Animoca Brands – TechCrunch

Animoca Brands, the Hong Kong-based gaming firm and the investor powering web3 major names like The Sandbox, Sky Mavis, Dapper Labs, and OpenSea, just obtained a talent strengthen.

Alan Lau, former CEO and chairman at Tencent’s in-residence coverage agency WeSure, has joined Animoca as its chief enterprise officer, Lau’s LinkedIn page shows.

Animoca, which got its start off as a cell game titles developer in 2014, has in the latest many years turn into 1 of the world’s most active world-wide-web3 investors with a escalating portfolio of in excess of 300 firms — both centralized and decentralized. As the main organization officer, Lau will oversee Animoca’s portfolio companies, guide mergers and acquisitions, and function on small business development, his profile claims.

World-wide-web coverage and the web3 entire world may appear to be to have minor overlap, but Lau’s involvement in artwork — sitting on the board of Asia-based assignments for Tate and Guggenheim Museum — could serve Animoca nicely as the art market has been eager to embrace the metaverse and NFTs. Lau’s working experience of operating a customer internet system with about 100 million registered users at WeSure could also lend itself to controlling a big portfolio of startups.

We have reached out to Animoca Brand names for comment.

Lau is not the only Tencent veteran that has made the change to web3. Benny Ho, who was beforehand inking investment decision bargains for Tencent’s gaming unit, is now a head of company improvement at Animoca.

With over 700 staff members throughout the world, Animoca Brand names jumped earlier $5 billion in valuation just after its $360 million funding spherical that was introduced in January. As of April, its portfolio was valued at over $1.5 billion across 340 investments, in accordance to its money report, and its stability sheet had $98 million in income and $211 million worthy of of electronic belongings holdings at the time.