News: AB1 Animoca Brands Corp Entered Into Earn-In Agreement With Venture Classic Ltd, page-18

They are operationally profitable. With the cash they've raised, it's better to invest or be used for accelerating core growth. They're using a minority portion of their cash into smart investments that can bear fruit in the future.

Zeroth is becoming a y-combinator for AI startups. With already 33 startups invested at 6% minimum each, and 30% performance fee + x (2%?) management fee, and AB1 owns 67% of that, I'm guessing 1 of these companies (current and future Zeroth batches) will become a unicorn, a few will have 8 - 9 figure exits and a bunch will fail. This $1.5m investment could very well 1000x in the years to come.

Y-Combinator is probably the most successful startup accelerator.

They invested early in these notable companies:

Company Name (current valuation) - (how much Animoca position would be worth if we assume a conservative minimum 6% stake and of that 6%, 30% Zeorth pockets and of that 30%, Animoca pockets 67%)

Airbnb ($43,000,000,000 / $43 billion) - (Animoca would own $518,500,000 / $518.5 million)
Stripe ($27,770,000,000 / $27.77 billion) - (Animoca would own $334,000,000 / $334 million)
Cruise ($16,000,000,000 / $16 billion) - (Animoca would own $192,000,000 / $192 million)
Dropbox ($14,650,000,000 / $14.65 billion) - (Animoca would own $176,600,000 / $176.6 million)
Coinbase ($8,300,000,000 / $8.3 billion) - (Animoca would own $99,600,000 / $99.6 million)
Zenefits ($6,250,000,000 / $6.25 billion) - (Animoca would own $75,300,000 / $75.3 million)
Instacart ($6,000,000,000 / $6 billion) - (Animoca would own $72,300,000 / $72.3 million)
Quora ($2,800,000,000 / $2.8 billion) - (Animoca would own $33,600,000 / $33.6 million)
Reddit ($2,500,000,000 / $2.5 billion) - (Animoca would own $30,000,000 / $30 million)
Docker ($1,800,000,000 / $1.8 billion) - (Animoca would own $21,600,000 / $21.6 million)
Twitch ($1,300,000,000 / $1.3 billion) - (Animoca would own $15,600,000 / $15.6 million)
Mixpanel ($1,100,000,000 / $1.1 billion) - (Animoca would own $13,200,000 / $13.2 million)
Flexport $1,050,000,000 / $1.05 billion) - (Animoca would own $12,600,000 / $12.6 million)

.... plenty of more startups that got acquired in 7 - 9 figures and plenty more that have died.

I'd like to conclude with this: By no means it's guaranteed that Zeroth could replicate this much success. It'd be lucky to just do a fraction of this success and that would be enough for this investment to make sense.