Animoca Brands Acquires Most of Educational Tech Company TinyTap for $38.9M

Gaming investment firm Animoca Brands has acquired more than 80% of TinyTap, an educational content technology company, for $38.88 million in cash and shares, according to a press release.

• The acquisition takes Animoca Brands’ stake in TinyTap to 84.1%.
• TinyTap, founded in 2012, is a platform that enables educators to create and post content – a model known as user-generated content (UGC) – while earning a usage-based share of revenue. The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company is the world’s largest educational games library, offering some 200,000 activities from educators and publishers, including Sesame Street and Oxford University Press, according to the release.
• Earlier this year, Animoca raised almost $360 million in a funding round at a valuation of $5.5 billion. Last week it revealed that its investment portfolio stood at $1.5 billion.
• Animoca said it will use TinyTap’s platform to generate educational blockchain-related content.
• “With our acquisition of TinyTap – a strong and proven leader in the field of UGC education – we will leverage blockchain to make new opportunities available to educators worldwide, allowing them to generate equity from their creations while offering parents enhanced learning opportunities for their kids,” said Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands.
• “We empower educators to create engaging learning activities that can reach millions of kids directly and that enable them to earn based on the success of their creations,” TinyTap CEO Yogev Shelly said. “By becoming a part of Animoca Brands, we will leverage blockchain to build a new education system that is independent of schools and governments.”