Virtuals Protocol teams up with Animoca Brands to invest in AI gaming

Virtuals Protocol, a decentralized platform for autonomous agents, is working with blockchain and metadata gaming giant Animoca Brands to develop AI agents and gaming space.

According to the announcement, the Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) team and Animoca Brands will also work with Agentstarter, an on-chain AI tool accelerator at Base.

The partnership aims to fund the next wave of agent-focused games as the two ecosystems of AI agents and games continue to merge.

The partners stated the following regarding their cooperation and mission:

“We’re here to fund new experiences, not just technology. “Our focus is on powering the dynamic game worlds of the future to deliver realistic excitement and interactivity to hundreds of millions of players around the world.”

The crypto market has seen a surge in Agentic development recently, with multiple projects achieving significant early success.

Virtual Protocol gained attention through projects such as GAME, aixbt, and VaderAI. It now aims to strengthen its collaboration with Animoca Brands and Agentstarter to support new AI gaming projects through capital injection, technical expertise and incubation.

The investment will focus on developers seeking the excitement of autonomous agents for their projects.

Such projects will feature bold ideas that go beyond the boundaries of traditional gaming, with potential interest in Sentient AI non-player characters, AI players, and AI avatars. AI players are agents capable of competing with real human players; AI avatars, on the other hand, can clone the player to act as their digital twin.

Animoca Brands has a large footprint in the web3 gaming ecosystem with investments in over 540 projects and partners. The company’s web3-related investments include The Sandbox, ApeCoin, Immutable, Axie Infinity and Decentraland.