Improbable receives $20m from venture capital firm

London-based tech firm Improbable has received a significant investment from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

The venture capital company has awarded $20m to Improbable, which will help with the studio’s work on pushing the boundaries of virtual worlds.

As part of the partnership, Chris Dixon joins Improbable’s board and will advice the start-up, as well Marc Andreessen and other partners at the firm.

“Improbable is creating an operating environment that makes simulated worlds possible,” said Improbable CEO Herman Narula. 

“Simulated worlds are digital spaces that can run in real time containing millions of entities with interesting behaviour that work in concert to create functioning worlds: spaces with their own rules and properties that a multitude of people can simultaneously change, explore and visualise in as many different ways as developers can imagine. We think simulated worlds can be used to solve problems in areas as diverse as defence, healthcare, economics and entertainment.”

Improbable is led by studio head and former Crytek dev Nick Button-Brown. Last year, we spoke to him about how Improbable’s tech could be used for video games.

Narula adds: “Since our beginnings almost three years ago at Cambridge University (whose support we are deeply thankful for), we’ve solved many of the problems needed to make simulated worlds a reality. We are now supporting our first customers.

“At the moment the main public applications are in games. We think there are all kinds of incredible experiences that game developers can build with our technology – experiences which, as gamers, we’ve always wanted to see. We are partnering with a carefully selected group of studios to help us experiment.”