Improbable raises US$150m to establish M², a metaverse network and ecosystem powered by its Morpheus technology

07.04.22

4 mins

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Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable, said: “We founded Improbable to make real the promise of incredible online worlds that were more than just games – they were extensions of our lives. I believe the metaverse and Web3 movement, though very early, represent a once-in-a-generation redefinition of our society towards a ‘fulfilment economy’ where experiences made by an open network of creators and businesses can create enormous opportunity for everyone. M² is our contribution to establishing this future and we hope to help our partners catalyse an open metaverse with many participants and success stories. We are excited to be actively working with some of the best investors in the space in building out this new ecosystem.”

"Giving people the tools to design their own metaverses at the scale that Improbable enables, with web3 interoperability and composability to expand on each other’s creations, will result in some truly groundbreaking virtual experiences,” said Chris Dixon, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “We are long-term backers of Improbable, and under Herman’s leadership, the team is making their lofty visions a reality.”

“We believe the core technology that Improbable has developed enables social experiences unrivalled in scale, resolution and fidelity for thousands of concurrent users,” said Antoine Theysset, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “The emerging metaverse presents an opportunity for Improbable and its partners to collectively build a leading, decentralised network to bring creators and fans closer together, and reward each other with tokens for their contributions. We have partnered with Herman and the team throughout Improbable’s evolution and are thrilled to support them in building another foundational element of the metaverse.”

“Improbable is enabling new types of shared immersive experiences that will accelerate a wide variety of emergent user behaviors, many of which are already taking root in the Web3 world. These include fair player-governed communities, complex player-driven economies & open developer-powered experiences. Improbable is the first team to pull this off technically, at scale, in production. As major supporters of BitDAO, we are excited to support the Improbable team — and by extension all future players that will come to rely on Improbable's technology — in the years to come,” commented Chris Kurdziel and Jon Allen at Mirana Ventures.

“Improbable's technology can improve the number of concurrent users and in-world complexity of the metaverse by orders of magnitude. DCG is excited to partner with Improbable to make this experience the de-facto standard and push the adoption of the metaverse forward.” – Matt Beck, Director of Investments, Digital Currency Group.

“As the metaverse continues to evolve, we believe Improbable's technology will be a core infrastructural component that redefines the way users will interact in this rapidly growing space," said Charlie Sandor, Investor at CMT Digital. "We are excited to be supporting the Improbable team at this critical juncture and believe the interoperability offered by M² will enable mass adoption of unique metaverse experiences."

“The metaverse is full of potential and promise, and we believe the pioneering technology Improbable has created will make good on that. We are confident Improbable will help companies build and connect exciting virtual worlds and enable meaningful virtual experiences,” commented Sachin Jaitly, General Partner at Morgan Creek Capital.

“Having developed the IP for creating game-changing tech for realising virtual worlds, Improbable is one of a small handful of players globally who can provide backbone infrastructure of the metaverse. Regardless of one's definition of the metaverse, the latency and throughput powered by Improbable coupled with the open developer ecosystem that encourages permissionless innovation, brings us closer to realizing the metaverse vision that we've dreamed about” – Min Teo, Managing Director, Ethereal Ventures.

"M²’s technology enables developers to build and scale composable metaverses, solving a core need for our founders within the Alliance accelerator", said Imran Khan, contributor at AllianceDAO.

Tatiana Metodieva, CFA, Head of Corporate Finance and Investments at Nexo, leading also Nexo Ventures: "Nexo's platform offers a unique combination of payment, lending and trading solutions involving digital assets. Through our partnership with Improbable, we aim to continue disrupting the traditional customer facing model and aspire to position Nexo as the prime digital bank across interoperable metaverses."

Among the investors supporting M² are also Nexo Ventures, Saranac Partners, a private office for entrepreneurs and family capital, Round13 DAF, Zinal Growth, the tech investment vehicle of Guillaume Pousaz and David E. Rutter.

*Bloomberg Intelligence calculates the global metaverse revenue opportunity could approach $800bn in 2024 across gaming, AR, VR and opportunities in social, live events and entertainment.