Animoca Brands won final approval to manage investment funds in Abu Dhabi, the crypto investor said today (Monday). The Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) granted a Financial Services Permission to its subsidiary Animoca Asset Management (AD) Limited.
The permission lets the unit manage a collective investment fund in or from ADGM, where the number of fund and asset managers rose 23% from a year earlier to 190 by the end of June. The FSRA granted 45 permissions of all types in the first half of 2026.
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The Abu Dhabi zone is still the smaller of the two UAE financial free zones by licenses held. FM Intelligence's license monitor counts 423 active licenses under the ADGM regulator, against 4,176 at the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) in its current register snapshot.
Eleven Months From Conditional Approval
Animoca received in-principle approval from the FSRA in November 2025. It came with conditions. The company could not run funds until it met the regulator's requirements and secured the final permission announced on Monday.
eToro, which went through the same two steps in ADGM, offers one benchmark. It moved from an in-principle approval in September 2022 to a full license to broker securities, derivatives and crypto assets in November 2023.
Measured by the dates of the announcements, that took eToro about 14 months and Animoca about 11, by FinanceMagnates.com's calculation.
Minh Do, senior executive officer and director of the asset management unit, called the permission a milestone for Animoca's Middle East operations.
"It allows us to manage collective investment funds under a robust regulatory framework," Do said.
A Dubai License Already in Hand
The Abu Dhabi permission is Animoca's second regulated foothold in the UAE this year. In February, the company announced a license from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) for broker-dealer and management services in virtual assets, offered to institutional and qualified investors.
VARA uses a similar two-stage process, and Kraken's parent Payward received final market approval in October, five months after its preliminary authorization in May.
Arvind Ramamurthy, chief market development officer at ADGM, said Animoca's move into fund management "strengthens the connections between institutional capital and digital assets" in the free zone.
In ADGM, Animoca joins crypto firms that already manage assets there. Nomura's digital asset unit Laser Digital secured a permission covering broker-dealer and asset management services in 2024.
Animoca, which built The Sandbox and the Moca Network, says it holds stakes in more than 600 companies and digital assets. It gave no fund name or size.
This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.
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