Animoca Brands And Cube Entertainment Establish AniCube Entertainment Music Metaverse Joint Venture

Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands and South Korean entertainment company Cube Entertainment announced the official establishment of their joint venture called AniCube Entertainment, aiming to build a music metaverse and issue non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and ecosystem tokens based on Cube Ent’s K-pop music artists and actors.

“The metaverse isn't a place: Why Animoca’s Yat Siu says the future is 100 billion AI agents Yat Siu said the metaverse is evolving beyond immersive digital worlds, with AI agents increasingly handling commerce, payments and coordination through blockchain infrastructure in the background”

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The partnership, first announced in November 2021, also entails AniCube bringing Cube Ent’s artists to The Sandbox, a decentralised gaming virtual world and a subsidiary of Animoca Brands.

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Animoca co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu said, “As a fan of K-pop and Korean culture, I am thrilled to contribute to AniCube, a JV that will guide K-pop music creators and fans in the open music metaverse.”

Cube Entertainment CEO Woohyung Ahn added, “With the support of Animoca Brands, the music metaverse created by AniCube will be global and open.”

Animoca Brands said it is boosting funding for early-stage ventures using its Minds platform, a system designed to support persistent AI agents, with a $10mn funding initiative focused on projects across gaming, finance and productivity.

In a 5 May statement, the company said the funding would be awarded on a rolling basis, and it framed the push as interest grows in “agentic systems” where autonomous software performs tasks, makes decisions and interacts with digital services on behalf of users.

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Yat Siu said, “We are entering a new era in which agentic AI will fundamentally reshape how we interact with technology, value, and each other,” adding that “Just as blockchain redfined digital ownership, agentic AI will redefine autonomy.”

Animoca also said Minds enables users to deploy continuously operating AI agents without managing infrastructure, with features such as retained context and agent coordination.

CoinDesk reported that The Sandbox metaverse platform is reducing its staff by more than half and closing offices worldwide as Animoca Brands takes direct control in response to the decline in users.

“The Sandbox metaverse platform is reducing its staff by more than half and closing offices worldwide as Animoca Brands takes direct control in response to the decline in users”

CoinDesk

The report said more than 50% of The Sandbox's 250 employees are laid off, and it described cash reserves estimated between $100 million and $300 million as a key issue in the restructuring.

Animoca told CoinDesk in an email statement that co-founders Arthur Madrid and Sebastien Borget have been repositioned into new strategic roles within The Sandbox ecosystem, with Madrid named chairman of The Sandbox's board and Borget serving as its global ambassador.

CoinDesk also said the restructuring would include the closure of offices in Argentina, Uruguay, South Korea, Thailand, and Turkey, with the company’s base in Lyon also slated to close.