AniBiz, the business-to-business licensing marketplace for anime, has raised US$6 million, and the money came from three of the companies that supply it with titles. Variety reported on October 27, 2026 that TBS Group, Toei Animation and TV Tokyo Holdings invested in the platform, which is run by Kun Gao's Nakama and now lists over 30 licensors.
AniBiz launched on July 2, 2026. Gao is Nakama's co-founder and president.
What the platform does
AniBiz describes itself as the first dedicated B2B marketplace built for the global anime industry. In plain terms, it is a directory plus a deal pipeline. On one side sit licensors: studios, production committees and rights management companies that control anime intellectual property. On the other sit licensees: consumer brands, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, startups, creators, game studios and entertainment companies that want to put a character on a product or in a campaign.
The company says its database covers thousands of series. Its pitch is that discovery, matching and warm introductions can be faster and more transparent than cold outreach through a fragmented industry.
The licensor lineup on the site includes ABC Animation, ADK, Aniplex, Avex Pictures, CyberAgent, Dai Nippon Printing, dentsu, DMM.com, Docomo Anime Store, Fuji Creative Corporation, FuRyu Pictures, GENCO, Gree, Hakuhodo DY Music & Pictures, IMAGICA Infos, MBS, Pony Canyon, Sho-Pro, Takara Tomy, TBS, Toei Animation, TOHO Global, TV Asahi, TV Tokyo, Warner Bros. Japan, YTV and YTE.
TBS, Toei Animation and TV Tokyo therefore sit on both sides of the transaction: as listed licensors and as investors.
How it charges
Gao told Anime News Network in July 2026 that the service has several tiers. The basic level is free and lets a licensee create a profile that licensors can search. A pro tier, priced at US$49 per month at launch, adds a data feed of titles along with production committee and other information. There is a third, more bespoke tier for companies with specific requirements.
That pricing is worth noting. A small manufacturer in Europe or Latin America that wants to license one character for a limited run has historically had no affordable way to find out who to ask. A free profile and a fifty-dollar subscription is a very different entry point from hiring a licensing agent.
The argument behind it
Gao's case to ANN was that anime licensing is complicated enough that new licensees struggle to break in, and licensors struggle to find and guide new partners. He described the platform as an attempt to make that process faster and to educate incoming licensees so they can join what he called the anime economy.
He also made a bigger claim: that there is a whole world of licensees outside the existing industry, at ten or a hundred times the current scale.
That is the interesting bet. Anime licensing revenue has grown, but it still concentrates in relatively few markets and few categories. Merchandise, games, apparel and food collaborations in North America, Europe and East Asia account for most of it.
Advertising agencies have been moving in the same direction. Dentsu signed a deal with Kodansha in late September 2026 to bring manga properties to brand marketers in the Americas, which is the same wager in a different form: that the demand for anime and manga IP among companies outside the industry is bigger than the current deal flow suggests.
Who else is involved
Nakama's co-founder and CEO is Brady McCollum. Co-founder Sae Whan Song has worked at Toei Animation, Crunchyroll and Viz Media, which is about as direct a résumé for this particular business as exists.
The three new investors are not passive money. TBS and TV Tokyo are broadcasters with production committee stakes across decades of series, and Toei Animation is one of the largest licensors in the industry. Their participation gives AniBiz credibility with the licensors it wants to keep signing, and it gives the investors a look at which properties are drawing interest from outside the usual buyers.
What it does not solve
A marketplace can shorten the search for a partner. It cannot shorten a licensing approval, and anime approvals are famously slow, involving rights holders, committees and territory-by-territory negotiation. Gao's own framing acknowledges this: he described the work as handholding new licensees through a complicated process, not removing the process.
The other open question is whether small licensees can afford what they find. AniBiz lowers the cost of finding a rights holder. The minimum guarantee and royalty terms that follow are still set by the licensor, and those numbers have not moved because a website exists.
For now, the platform is doing the unglamorous work of putting names and contacts in one place. Six million dollars from three broadcasters and a studio suggests the people who own the catalogs think that is worth funding.
Source: Anime News Network, citing Variety
Featured image: AniBiz logo, via Anime News Network.
