London-based AI and simulation start-up Improbable bags $502m in funding from SoftBank

Improbable offers a cloud-based environment for games developers to create their own AI-powered simulated worlds

London-based Improbable has bagged $502m in venture capital funding from SoftBank, the Japanese company that completed its acquisition of UK semiconductor design company ARM in September last year for £24.3bn.

Improbable developed SpatialOS, a cloud-based platform that enables games developers to add ‘deep simulation' to their games enabling, for example, a fully simulated city to be developed with its own movement and traffic patterns, pollution, energy consumption and so on. The company foresees its technology being used in virtual reality gaming to create more realistic games.

However, the technology could be applied more broadly, believes CEO Herman Narula.

"We believe that the next major phase in computing will be the emergence of large-scale virtual worlds which enrich human experience and change how we understand the real world. At Improbable we have spent the last few years building the foundational infrastructure for this vision," said Narula.

Potential applications include simulating transport infrastructure, telecoms networks or the behaviour of fleets of autonomous vehicles, claims the company.

While its SpatialOS has only been in live beta since March, the company claims that, thanks to its integration with a number of major gaming engines, a number of developers are already using it to create a series of new games that can handle a high number of player numbers and can easily scale. In time, the technology could be used for more serious applications.

The company was founded by a trio of computing and computer science graduates in 2012. Herman Narula, who serves as CEO, and Rob Whitehead, chief technology officer, met while studying computer science at Cambridge University.

Chief operating officer Peter Lipka, meanwhile, is a computing graduate of Imperial College, London, who worked as an analyst developer in the Proprietary Accounting and Risk Analysis division of investment bank Goldman Sachs prior to co-founding the company.

Other investors in the company include Andreessen Horowitz and Horizon Ventures.

Computing's IT Leaders Forum 2017 is coming on 24 May 2017. The theme this year is "Going Digital: Why your most difficult customer is your best friend".

Attendence is free, but strictly limited to IT Leaders. To find out more and to apply for your place, check out the IT Leaders Forum website.