I wrote to Animoca asking for clarification...here's the response...
We apologize for the retweet from Twitter user dollars_and_cents erroneously claiming that Animoca Brands is a private company. Animoca Brands is, of course, publicly listed. Our news about the proposed acquisition of nWay generated a lot of activity, and this error slipped past our staff. We have contacted dollars_and_cents with a request to correct this claim. Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention.