British tech startup Improbable has raised a staggering $502m in Series B funding in a round led by Japanese firm Softbank.
Improbable’s Series A investors Andreessen Horowitz and Horizons Ventures also made follow-on investments.
According to a statement issued by the company, the funds will be used to continue developing its technology and to recruit more people for its London HQ – where it currently employs 200 people –and its San Francisco office.
Improbable leverages cloud-based distributed computing to create virtual constructs for use in games and large-scale simulations of real world scenarios.
Speaking about the news, Herman Narula, CEO of Improbable, said: “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,’ he added.
As part of the investment deal, Improbable – which now surpasses Deliveroo in terms of total funding raised to date – says it will explore new opportunities with Softbank, its partners and its other portfolio companies.
Deep Nishar, managing director of Softbank, commented on Improbable’s progress to date.
“Improbable is building breakthrough technologies that are becoming vital and valuable platforms for the global gaming industry.
“Beyond gaming, this new form of simulation on a massive scale has the potential to help us make better decisions about the world we live in.
“Improbable’s technology will help us explore disease, improve cities, understand economies and solve complex problems on a previously unimaginable scale,” he added, while noting that along with machine learning and IoT, the firm’s distributed computation technology represented a critical next frontier in computing.
The news comes after the London-based firm closed a $22.09m Series A in March 2015.