London-based Improbable, a blockchain game maker that raised $500M from SoftBank in 2017, is close to raising £100M at a £3B+ valuation, up from £2.5B in 2018
Context & Ripple Effects
Improbable has spent a decade converting investor conviction into scale: a $20M seed from a16z in 2015, then SoftBank's $502M bet in 2017, then a NetEase round that reportedly doubled its valuation in 2018. The counterweight came in 2020, when sources described SpatialOS struggling to attract developers with only one game running on it.
The company answered by pivoting to blockchain: an $150M M² round at a $1B valuation in April 2022, led by a16z and Vision Fund 2. Six months later it is close to £100M at £3B-plus — a tripling of the price set in the spring, with no intervening product milestone in the record beyond the pivot itself.
First-order effects
- The new round re-rates Improbable from the $1B set in April's M² raise to £3B-plus, marking up stakes held by SoftBank and a16z on the strength of the blockchain pivot.
- The £100M extends the runway for M²'s virtual-world interoperability push after SpatialOS failed to win developers.
Second-order effects
- Rivals in blockchain gaming and connected virtual worlds now face a competitor whose war chest survived a full strategic pivot intact — competing on funding durability rather than shipped titles.
- For SoftBank, another Improbable markup lands in a quarter when its net profit fell about 18% year over year, giving the Vision Fund a rare up-round to point to.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, late-stage valuations are increasingly set by follow-on investor conviction across pivots — simulation platform to blockchain network — rather than by usage or revenue, insulating mega-backed companies from the traction metrics that discipline smaller players.
- The corollary is deepening capital concentration: a handful of repeat backers can keep a single company's option value alive indefinitely, raising the bar for any underfunded challenger in the same category.
The trend: Late-stage capital concentration is allowing heavily backed platforms to reset their narrative — and their valuation — faster than their products find real users.