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Animationthe protocol for dynamic and native augmented reality, said it has raised an additional $3 million in capital from new investors for its Onlybots AR digital pets.
AnimationFunding came from HashKey, Not Boring Capital, Polygon Studios and NGC Ventures. They join the company’s previous investors Coinbase Ventures, Flamingo and Divergence Ventures.
“Web3 has brought digital assets under our control, but they still fail to connect to our lives in meaningful and non-speculative ways. Augmented reality provides that relevance and connection,” Alex Herrity, co-founder of Anima, said in a statement. “We believe that creative minds should shape this new medium. Anima’s protocol and toolset turn reality into a canvas for creators, linking the context of the physical world with real digital property.”
Collaborating with artists such as Michael Kagan and Lyle Owerko, Anima’s early projects demonstrated the potential of augmented reality as an outlet for creators to explore new avenues, set records for AR auctions, and more than a million dollars in art sales to generate.
Last week, Anima introduced Onlybots, a collection of augmented reality creatures that showcase an ambitious collectible built for AR.
The project sold out within an hour of its launch, reaching the most popular projects in trading markets. Earlier this year, the Mirror project with street artist Demsky was built with Anima’s location-based AR functionality to kick-start ongoing evolutions of 3D digital sculptures, forcing collectors to travel hundreds of miles across countries on their real-world search for virtual landmarks.
“With Anima, creators can expand their toolkits and take their creativity from the screen to the physical world. They are building a future where the whole world becomes a canvas,” Not Boring investor Packy McCormick said in a statement.
The Anima protocol and toolset are in private beta with a public launch in early 2023, giving creators a path to release and symbolize dynamic creations that interact with the real world. Anima allows creators to set the terms of their sale and empowers collectors to take real ownership.
Projects being built on the Anima protocol range from on-chain virtual pets to video games to immersive
fine art sculptures.
Anima was founded in 2021 by co-founders Neil Voss and Herrity, known for their work building iconic
creative products with companies like Nintendo, Epic Games, HBO, Tumblr and Flipboard. The company has 10 employees. Animation revealed last year a small roundup of Coinbase, Flamingo and others in tech and Web3.
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