Animoca Brands makes strategic investment in Ava Labs focusing on Middle East

Animoca Brands, a global digital assets leader building and investing in impactful technologies and ecosystems to reimagine future economies, has made a what it calls a strategic investment and partnership with Ava Labs, the company dedicated to advancing the adoption and scalability of the Avalanche ecosystem.

As per the press release, the collaboration to support capital deployment, product integrations, and support to high potential projects building on Avalanche Blockchain will initially focus on the Middle East and Asia. Already Animoca Brands has established offices in the UAE and relationships in KSA and the UAE. In February 2026 Animoca Brands also received a crypto license in the UAE.

‍Omar Elassar, head of global strategic partnerships and managing director for Middle East at Animoca Brands, said, “We’re very deliberate about the ecosystems we partner with. Avalanche combines scalable subnet architecture with EVM compatibility, which makes it particularly well suited for sovereign and institutional deployments, areas where we see growing demand globally.”

He notes that their initial focus will be on identity integrations and RWA tokenization, with a broader goal of supporting builders within the Avalanche ecosystem and boosting its adoption.

Key verticals that will be of interest are in the areas of entertainment, real world assets and digital identity. Moreover the partnership seeks to strengthen Avalanche presence as well as its positioning as a platform for real world blockchain adoption.

‍‍‍John Nahas, chief business officer at Ava Labs, said, “Animoca Brands brings experience across consumer, institutional blockchain ecosystems, and a wide network of portfolio companies. This partnership supports Avalanche ecosystem expansion in Asia and the Middle East – two regions seeing sustained growth in digital asset activity. We’re thrilled to collaborate on initiatives that improve user access and interoperability for applications building on Avalanche.”

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