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Hong Kong’s Animoca Brands gets in on Saudi Arabia’s Web3 ground floor with early investment, partnerships
- The Web3 video gaming unicorn has signed an MOU with Saudi Arabia’s state-backed research centre
- Animoca is betting on a growing consumer market for Web3 gaming in Saudi Arabia owing to high revenues per user
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Animoca Brands is looking to enter the ground floor of Web3 development in Saudi Arabia after recently signing a memorandum of understanding with the country’s primary scientific research centre, said company co-founder and chairman Yat Siu in an interview.
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The Hong Kong-based blockchain gaming unicorn recently expanded its cooperation in Saudi Arabia with a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), which it signed during the Leap conference in Riyadh earlier this month. Hong Kong Science and Technology Park (HKSTP) and Cyberport also signed MOUs with KACST during the event.
Animoca, though, was one of the few start-ups at Leap focused on what it sees as a burgeoning opportunity in the Web3 market, especially in gaming. The company is already an investor in the Neom smart city project in the northwest of the country. Having long been involved in the United Arab Emirates, where Dubai has made itself a regional Web3 hub, Animoca now sees an opportunity to be part of an even earlier stage of development.
“Most of our investments are all over the world. But our priority in terms of building out infrastructure and building out business operations is definitely Saudi,” Siu said. “Also, Saudi is a market in itself, with a very strong gaming population.”
Siu noted that Dubai is primarily an export-driven market, whereas Saudi Arabia has some of the highest average revenues per user (ARPU) in the world.
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