Animoca Brands is handing daily leadership to Yat Siu. He will become CEO on Dec. 1, 2026, while keeping the executive chairman role. The company said the change lets Siu take direct charge of operations and project work. The board will still handle strategy, governance, and compliance oversight.
Leadership change and roles
Evan Auyang, group president since 2021, will move to a senior advisory role and report to the board. Animoca also listed Robby Yung, a former CEO, as CEO of investments and CEO of The Sandbox. The company says its portfolio covers more than 600 companies and digital assets, plus projects it builds such as The Sandbox and Anichess. I think the structure suggests Animoca wants a clearer split between board oversight and hands-on management.
AI agents and ordinary users
Siu’s plan puts AI agents near the center. Minds, Animoca’s personal AI agent platform, launched in beta about six months ago, he said. The pitch is simple enough: users can give instructions in normal language instead of dealing with wallets, fees, and bridging. Animoca also points to Moca Network and AIR as ways to provide identity, credentials, and permissions that agents need to transact securely. That is a practical angle, though perhaps a hard one to prove in practice.
Institutional products and revenue
The institutional work is already moving. Animoca is co-developing NUVA, a marketplace for tokenized real-world assets, with Provenance Blockchain Labs. Siu also cited the company’s collaboration with Franklin Templeton as a way to widen access to tokenized investments. For the existing portfolio, he set priorities around products, real-world use, operational discipline, and capital efficiency. The goal for institutional capabilities is to turn them into adoption and sustainable revenue. The next test will be whether AI agents can actually help users access investments, allocate capital, and transact without adding new layers of friction. The company is not starting from zero, but the timeline is long. Success will depend on execution, not just the CEO title.
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