Animoca Brands has made a strategic investment in Ava Labs, the core development company behind Avalanche, and the two sides have entered a commercial partnership. In a statement released on March 19, they said the deal is intended to connect Animoca Brands’ portfolio network with Avalanche’s scalable infrastructure and support high-potential projects being built on the chain. The initial focus is on digital identity, real-world assets (RWA), and entertainment.
Support plan spans capital, integration, and advisory work
The partnership goes beyond funding. Animoca Brands said it will support Avalanche ecosystem projects through capital deployment, product integration exploration, and strategic guidance. The stated goal is to help promising teams on Avalanche move toward broader adoption and commercial execution.
Each of the three priority sectors has a defined role. For digital identity, the effort centers on infrastructure for cross-chain and cross-application authentication. In RWA, the two companies are looking at tokenization initiatives built on Avalanche’s architecture. In entertainment and gaming, the plan is to combine Animoca Brands’ strengths in content and consumer reach with Avalanche-based development.
Asia and the Middle East are the first target regions
Geographically, the first expansion focus will be Asia and the Middle East. Ava Labs Chief Business Officer John Nahas said digital asset activity in both regions continues to grow, while Animoca Brands’ regional infrastructure and institutional relationships can help Avalanche ecosystem projects reach commercial deployment.
Omar Elassar, head of global strategic partnerships at Animoca Brands and managing director for the Middle East, pointed to Avalanche’s technical design as a key reason behind the partnership. He said the combination of a scalable Subnet architecture and EVM compatibility makes Avalanche particularly suitable for sovereign and institutional-grade deployments, an area he described as seeing strong demand globally.