Animoca Brands buys Quidd for up to $8 million as it moves into blockchain collectibles
Animoca Brands has agreed to acquire Quidd, a maker of a digital collectible marketplace with 6.8 million unique users. The purchase price is as much as $8 million.
The move is part of Animoca Brands‘ long-term effort to marry blockchain technology — the transparent and secure digital ledger — with sellable digital merchandise such as collectible characters. By adding blockchain, Animoca Brands will be able to uniquely identify digital items, enabling true digital ownership for users and guaranteeing item rarity.
New York-based Quidd claims it has the world’s largest assortment of digital collectibles licenses and partnerships (with over 325 brands) featuring the world’s top content owners across multiple verticals – partners include Disney, Marvel, HBO (Game of Thrones), CBS (Star Trek) and NBA, among others.
To date, Quidd has issued over 2.1 billion individually-serialized digital collectibles to 6.8 million unique users, and it had an average of 208,000 monthly active users for the first half of 2019. Quidd was founded by veterans from Topps, the leader in the sports memorabilia and collectibles industry.
Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands said the deal significantly increases its economic potential in the digital collectibles sector through digital licensing arrangements with premier content owners.
“Here at Animoca Brands, we are incredibly excited to welcome the highly talented team behind Quidd, who will assist us in the execution of our vision for branded digital collectibles,” said Yat Siu, cofounder and chairman of Animoca Brands, in a statement. “Our brand portfolio will grow substantially through this acquisition, and we look forward to working with even more of the world’s most powerful intellectual properties such as Marvel, Game of Thrones, Star Trek, the NBA, and many others.”
Under the deal, it will pay $5 million upfront to buy Quidd, and then pay $3 million based on hitting profit goals.
Animoca Brands completed a strategic capital raise of A$8 million Australian dollars, or $5.4 million in U.S. currency, at 20 Australian cents per share.
Started in 2016 by Michael Bramlage and Erich Wood, the Quidd marketplace, catalog, and collections are available to users via the Quidd mobile application, or app, available free of charge on iOS and Android devices. Quidd raised $10 million and its largest investor is Sequoia Capital.
The deal is subject to shareholder approval.
“From the beginning, we’ve held a strong conviction that digital collecting would contribute meaningfully to the $15 billion physical collectibles industry,” said Bramlage, CEO of Quidd, in a statement. “By joining the Animoca Brands family, we will accelerate our mission to bring Quidd’s inimitable catalog of digital collectibles to a global audience and to enable true digital ownership for millions of mainstream digital collectors.”
Source: VentureBeat
