Quick take:
- Liu Jiaming will manage Animoca’s portfolio of merger and acquisition companies.
- Animoca has been expanding its team despite the bear market.
- The company plans to double down on its expansion plans.
Liu Jiaming, the former head of insurance at Tencent’s WeSure platform, has resigned from his role at the company on Jul 15 “due to personal reasons” after six years at the company, according to Chinese microblogging site, Weibo.
WeSure is an insurance agency owned by Tencent, where Liu Jiaming served as executive director and was responsible for establishing its online insurance business.
Following his resignation, Liu Jiaming will be joining Hong Kong-based blockchain gaming and venture capital firm, Animoca Brands, as Chief Business Officer. In his new role, Jiaming will be tasked with managing Animoca’s portfolio of over 340 merger and acquisition companies in the Web3 space.
Prior to Tencent, Liu Jiaming was an investment banking analyst at Citibank and was a partner at McKinsey.
In April, Animoca acquired French gaming developer, Eden Games. The company revealed in June that it has $1.5 billion in assets under management.
Animoca has been expanding its team since last year’s bull run rapidly accelerated the Web3 market and has no plans to stop despite the current bear market. The company recently raised $75.32 million at a pre-money valuation of $5.9 billion.
The company will use the new capital to fund more strategic acquisitions, investments, and product development, and secure licenses for popular intellectual properties, and hiring more people.
Tencent has been expanding its metaverse presence in recent months, with patent filings to offer virtual concerts followed by the launch of a new extended reality unit and an avatar PFP project to be used in a virtual music hub as part of its metaverse push.
While Tencent has been experimenting with the NFT space, it shut down its NFT business last week and replaced the “Digital Collections” section of its news app with “Digital Orders” to prevent users from trading NFTs on the secondary market.
This move was due to the “Digital Collectible Industry Self-Discipline Development Initiative” – an unofficial body dedicated to preventing secondary trading of NFTs and speculation – led by led by Chinese tech giants, Baidu and JD.com, Tencent, and Ant Group.
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