Animoca eyes stablecoins, AI, DePIN as it expands focus in 2026: Exec

Web3 gaming giant Animoca Brands is looking beyond gaming next year to expand its current portfolio of around 600 companies, says the companys chief strategy officer, Keyvan Peymani.

“We invest in dozens of companies a year,” Peymani said during a CNBC interview on Tuesday. “The aim for that, whether it is AI or DePIN or DeFi or games, or any of the kind of new sectors and stablecoins and opportunities that are coming in, is to always look at how the ecosystem we are a part of is expanding.”

Gaming represents the biggest category in Animoca Brands portfolio, with 230 of the 628 companies it has invested in related to gaming. The company was founded in 2014, originally leaning heavily on just gaming, and has been an early investor in many Web3 gaming projects, including Axie Infinity, CryptoKitties, Colossal, and Yield Guild Games.

Animoca Brand‘s chief strategy officer Keyvan Peymani speaking to CNBC’s Crypto World. Source: CNBC

The company has a growing amount of investment in Infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and decentralized finance (DeFi).

“What we aim to do is whenever there is something interesting and exciting happening, as with stablecoins and RWAs, that were going to become one of the market leaders,” he explained, adding that Animoca is aiming to become a way for the entire retail sector to benefit from the changes that happen within the Web3 ecosystem.

Animoca eyes “game-changing” projects

“You should expect us to continue doing that and continue to find those projects that we think are going to be game-changing for the industry,” he said, adding that stablecoins will be a major near-term focus for the company.

Animoca founder Yat Siu told Cointelegraph on Wednesday that institutional participation will be “very important” for the crypto industry‘s next phase of growth, but it won’t be all about just Bitcoin.

“The institutional aspect won‘t just be led by Bitcoin and buy some tokens to have exposure. It’s going to be institutional adoption in terms of utility, because of the market structure bill,” Siu said.

On Nov. 11, US lawmakers released a draft of a crypto market structure bill to denote how agencies will split regulating crypto, which the Senate is set to vote on in December.

Animoca still bullish on the gaming sector

Despite Animoca expanding into new verticals, Peymani said gaming remains a strong priority.

“We‘re still very bullish on what’s going to happen in games and how people can truly benefit from their time and energy and effort and money that they spend in those games to have an asset that lives beyond in the Web3 space,” he said.

The third quarter of 2025 saw a 290% quarter-on-quarter jump in crypto venture funding, marking its strongest quarter since Q1 with $4.8 billion invested, Galaxy Digital reported on Monday.

It said that established companies in the crypto space, especially those founded in 2018, accounted for most of the capital raised, while companies founded in 2024 accounted for the highest number of deals.

Animoca Brands is planning to go public on the Nasdaq next year via reverse merger with the AI-focused public fintech company Currenc Group.