Animoca Brands said it completed the acquisition of Vietnam-based Somo on January 14, 2026, positioning the group to scale Somo’s gaming and digital-collectible rails as the NFT market shows signs of a measured rebound. The transaction is being framed as a utility-led expansion rather than a pure price-cycle bet, with Animoca aiming to plug Somo’s marketplace and gaming loop into its broader Web3 portfolio.
Early-January market data pointed to a modest recovery that is real but still fragile. Market coverage put global NFT market capitalization about 20% higher across the first two weeks of 2026, rising from roughly $2.5 billion on January 1 to just over $3 billion by mid-January, while CryptoSlam reported weekly sales of $69 million, up around 10% week-on-week.
NFT market backdrop and what’s actually improving
Momentum indicators improved on the margin, with 24-hour trading volumes rising nearly 19% in mid-January according to the same stream of aggregated market reporting. That pattern suggests incremental risk appetite returning, even if liquidity remains selective and reactive to near-term catalysts.
Blue-chip collections contributed to the rebound, as market tracking referenced floor-price gains near 10% that helped lift sentiment. The move supports a “quality-first” bounce narrative, where capital concentrates into recognized collections rather than broadly repricing the entire tail of NFT assets.
Even with the uptick, the sector remains far below prior cycle levels, which is why the recovery is being described as constrained. TradingView and other sources cited in the coverage noted the NFT market cap was $7.3 billion on January 14, 2025, implying a roughly 59% year-on-year decline despite the recent improvement. That context matters for positioning because it reframes the rally as a partial retrace, not a reset.
Why Somo fits Animoca’s operating model
Somo operates an NFT marketplace and a gaming ecosystem built around turning collectibles into tradable, playable assets, and Animoca positioned the acquisition as complementary to its existing Web3 gaming footprint. In its own framing, Animoca said the deal will “strengthen the SOMO brand by leveraging our existing Web3 ecosystem,” signaling an integration thesis centered on user migration, distribution, and cross-property asset flows.
From an infrastructure and capacity standpoint, Somo’s operational baseline offers a tangible reference point: the company said it processed more than 500,000 on-chain transactions in 2025. That throughput figure becomes a planning input for integration work, especially if Animoca routes more users and assets through shared wallet, custody, and settlement components across its broader gaming and collectibles stack.
Animoca’s corporate roadmap adds another layer of execution pressure, because the group is also pursuing a Nasdaq listing via a reverse merger with Currenc Group that is expected to close later in 2026. Animoca shareholders are projected to retain roughly 95% of the combined company, and that public-market pathway increases the bar for operational rigor across compliance, custody structure, and token-accounting controls as visibility expands.
Looking ahead, the key question is whether Somo’s on-chain activity converts into durable retention and repeat trading once it is integrated into Animoca’s ecosystem. The reverse-merger process later in 2026 becomes a forcing function: smooth execution could unlock additional capital for scaling infrastructure and integrations, while delays or friction could constrain bandwidth for cross-platform portability, settlement operations, and custody upgrades.