Improbable Achieves Profitability in 2023 and Launches Its Venture Builder Model With a Strong Capital Position to Pursue New Investments

Highlights

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• Profitability achieved in 2023
  • Improbable submitted its filing to Companies House today. In 2023 the company achieved profitability, validating its technology and business.
  • Excluding one-time items, revenue increased by 37%, to a total of £66 million.
  • Improbable achieved profitability for the first time, recording £11 million in profit.
  • The company ended 2023 with a strong cash position of £185 million, driven by successful exits of its initial ventures.
  • The strategic focus on the metaverse early 2022 resulted in rightsizing of the company, generating increasing revenue and optimizing operations.
• Technological edge and market position
  • A decade of investment and experience in high-performance distributed systems has positioned Improbable at the forefront of addressing scale in traditional cloud computing.
  • Additionally, having deployed its technologies throughout dozens of commercial applications, Improbable is leveraging this experience towards the development of emerging technologies for the metaverse, blockchain and AI.
  • The MSquared Platform now has many external content developers in early access mode and tens of metaverse projects are being regularly tested with consumers.
• Successful shift to Venture Building in 2023
  • Improbable announced its transition to a venture builder model in Q3 2023, and triggered its first important exit with the sale of its games services business, MPG, at the end of the year.
  • The approach focuses on building ventures in cutting-edge sectors like AI, blockchain, and the metaverse, investing in both Infrastructure Ventures that serve as platforms for businesses and B2B or Consumer Application Ventures.
• Support for ventures for a fast start
  • The company will deploy capital along with a broad set of support services, supporting founders with fundraising, strategic advice and simplified operations.
• A hands-on approach for 2024-2025
  • Improbable aims to launch multiple start-ups annually, creating commercially successful businesses, and participating into a high value portfolio.
  • The company maintains equity in a valuable portfolio, contributing ideas and resources, and offering more operational involvement than typical funds or investors.

Herman Narula, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Improbable declared: "A decade ago, we embarked on the challenging yet immensely rewarding journey of focusing on distributed systems for virtual worlds. Over this period, we have honed our expertise in bringing complex technology products to market, seeded and grown businesses, and developed proprietary technology with significant barriers to entry.

Two years ago, we doubled down on our commitment to the metaverse. In 2023, we recorded revenues of £66 million and achieved a total profit of £11 million, driven by growth, cost discipline, and divestment of high-value assets. We’ve uniquely demonstrated the ability to pursue distinct, real businesses simultaneously. Venture building has proven to be the optimal model for both Improbable and the metaverse, as experimenting with various use cases is key to achieving adoption.

Through strategic investments in both large partnerships and start-ups, we continue to advance the case for the metaverse. Our ambition is to shape the future, and our experience provides us with unique insights to do so. I extend my heartfelt thanks to our leadership team, especially our CFO, Dan Odell, for their unwavering dedication in propelling Improbable to its current place of strength."

Dan Odell, Chief Financial Officer: “Entering 2024, we have significantly improved our cost structure, and can count on a strong capital position further supported by the successful exits of our first ventures. Improbable has laid the foundation for executing on its Venture Builder strategy. The portfolio of ventures as we enter 2024 is exciting and I trust in the future success of the business.”

Peter Lipka, Chief Operating Officer: “We believe that there are significant unaddressed opportunities in the AI, web3 and metaverse sectors. We aim to identify founders that we can help accelerate by unlocking the capital they need, and providing a foundation for them to operate on. Our goal is for our venture builder model to be the best place to start a business in these sectors.”

Rob Whitehead, Chief Product Officer: “We are proud to continue hosting the highest density virtual events in the world. After primarily using this technology internally, we are thrilled to start opening our platform to external developers later this year, starting with Yuga Lab's Otherside Developer Kit (ODK). Our next steps involve enhancing this toolset, further developing interoperability on our network, advancing blockchain technology for metaverse applications, and exploring the transformative impact of Generative AI.”

Improbable is a start-up that has been at the forefront of building virtual worlds for over a decade.

We believe that the metaverse is an opportunity for communities, companies and brands to have a positive social and economic impact in the real world. Today, we are initiating new technologies, models and partnerships to venture further into new worlds.

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