As part of a new deal, Zeroth and DEEPCORE will collaborate to share deal flow, expertise and information for technology investments in Asian markets.
Animoca Brands Corporation Ltd has inked a strategic partnership with Japanese artificial intelligence incubator DEEPCORE, owned by global technology player SoftBank Group Corp.
Animoca entered the partnership via its wholly owned subsidiary Zeroth, which operates Asia’s first accelerator program targeted at AI and machine learning startups.
As part of the partnership, Zeroth and DEEPCORE will collaborate to share deal flow, expertise and information for technology investments in Asian markets. They will bring their respective communities together and back the growth of the AI founder community over the next few years.
Not long ago, Zeroth bagged $3 million through a deal that sees Animoca Brands take a 67 percent share stake in DEEPCORE’s operating business and provide a check for its investment arm.
Complementary strengths
While DEEPCORE is focused on starting new ventures and investing in AI companies, Hong Kong-based accelerator Zeroth is one of the world’s first AI accelerators focused on frontier technologies like AI and machine learning.
SoftBank launched DEEPCORE earlier this year to give the organization a foothold in early AI projects. The company operates the AI-focused incubation community “KERNEL HONGO” for AI engineers and researchers in Tokyo. It also operates a venture capital (VC) fund, called DEEPCORE TOKYO, which invests in seed and early-stage AI startups.
Founded two years ago, Zeroth has till date graduated 33 companies from three batches, taking an average of six percent equity in each. Some of those graduates also managed to raise further funding from prominent venture capital firms including Horizons Ventures, Mizuho Venture Capital, Portag3 Ventures, KB Investments and Aeternity Ventures.
The invested companies include Clickful, DT42, Aniwear, Fano Labs, Seoul Robotics, Laboratik, Quadrant Protocol, Perlin Network and DREP Foundation, among others.
Besides its accelerating programme, Zeroth has made eight investments in companies focused on blockchain technology.
Recently, Zeroth launched two new programmes in Bengaluru, India and Tokyo, Japan as part of its fourth cohort, due to start on November 26.
