SoftBank-backed startup Improbable outlines plan for metaverse to rival Microsoft, Meta
Improbable CEO and co-founder Herman Narula.
Improbable/Viva Tech
Improbable, a SoftBank-backed startup developing huge virtual worlds, on Friday launched its plans for a network of metaverses that it hopes will one day be capable of hosting thousands of users and compete with platforms from U.S. tech giants such as Meta and Microsoft.
The British company, which was founded in 2012, released a white paper detailing its vision for MSquared, a “network of interoperable Web3 metaverses,” or 3D spaces in which people can live, work and interact with each other virtually. MSquared, which is a separate business entity from Improbable, raised $150 million from investors last year.
Google, Nvidia and Japanese cloud gaming firm Ubitus will serve as technical partners for the launch, Improbable said, providing the “cloud infrastructure, cloud pixel streaming, and video & audio technologies to enable unique, highly qualitative, easily accessible and seamless experiences in the metaverse.”
Behind MSquared is a complex feat of technical engineering with significant computing requirements. The service is intended to be accessible via cloud streaming, meaning you won’t have to download any software to jump into one of its worlds, similar to how movies and TV shows are accessed on Netflix.
What Improbable is launching isn’t a public release of its network of metaverses but rather the developer tools that will enable programmers to build their own metaverses. Developers began accessing its MML programming language as of Thursday evening, which enabled them to start creating objects in its digital worlds.
“The purpose of the metaverse is to enable new interactive entertainment experiences,” Herman Narula, Improbable’s co-founder and CEO, told CNBC.
Narula cited the video games Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite as examples of metaverses that are already “incredibly successful.”
That’s because they’ve enabled people to take part in mass community and entertainment events, from parties to shared gaming experiences to live music concerts.
Entities will be able to build metaverse experiences using Improbable’s Morpheus technology, which is designed to host mass-scale multiplayer online games, Improbable said.
Improbable was previously able to host 4,500 players in a demonstration in partnership with blockchain firm Yuga Labs. The second time Improbable attempted this, it hosted a record-breaking 7,200 concurrent users.
What Improbable is building
Improbable said there will be four categories of participants that take part in MSquared: metaverse owners, content creators, service providers and users.
WATCH: SoftBank-backed startup Improbable launches MSquared metaverse
Metaverse owners are entities building a metaverse, content creators are the ones producing experiences or objects within a metaverse, service providers are the ones offering storage and computing power and users are those visiting metaverses and consuming content.
The idea is that, eventually, more than 10,000 people would be able to access MSquared. It will initially only be accessible via desktop, however Improbable said the plan is for this to be expanded to mobile devices and consoles by the end of the year.
Narula said MSquared is something that can live independently of Improbable — in other words, if Improbable were to cease to exist, MSquared would continue on uninterrupted.
“This really isn’t about Improbable,” he told CNBC. “We’re hyper involved in it” but over time will become less involved as other partners and developers come in, he said, adding this was necessary so that users, developers and brands “don’t feel locked into working with Improbable.”
“I’m OK with that,” Narula said. “It’s not just that I’m OK with it — it’s an essential facet of making this an economic reality.”
To make MSquared a success, though, the company will need brands to build experiences with its technology. The company hasn’t named any of those brands yet, but said it expects to announce its first partner, a major sports brand, as soon as next week.
Improbable will compete with the likes of Meta and Microsoft, which are building their own metaverses, as well as Roblox and Epic Games.
What is Improbable?
The London firm, one of Japanese tech investment giant SoftBank’s biggest bets in Britain, was founded by Cambridge computer science students Narula and Rob Whitehead with the ambition of developing large-scale computer simulations and “synthetic environments.”
Improbable’s original business plan was to apply its technology in gaming, and the company had partnerships with numerous studios including Bossa Studios to develop huge, constantly rendering mass multiplayer online games with its SpatialOS technology.
These games struggled to achieve scale, though, and Improbable wound down many of its gaming projects some years ago as a result.
The company later pivoted its focus toward deals with military and defense departments of governments in the U.K. and U.S. This venture similarly struggled, and Improbable recently sold off its defense portfolio.
The tech industry has been betting that virtual and augmented reality will prove to be something of a “paradigm” shift in technology akin to the invention of the internet or the smartphone.
Some are calling it the technology’s “iPhone moment,” in reference to effect Apple’s now ubiquitous handset had on consumers and businesses globally. Apple recently announced its first virtual and augmented reality headset, called the Vision Pro.
Improbable is taking a different route to companies like Meta, which has its Quest headsets and Horizon Worlds digital community software, and Microsoft, which is behind the HoloLens mixed reality products.
For one, you won’t need a headset to jump into an MSquared space, as the software will be desktop-based. And the experience will be a more “decentralized” one, Narula said, adding current metaverse platforms such as Meta and Microsoft’s are “walled gardens.”
‘European Union of the metaverse’
Improbable is aiming to make its metaverse a “decentralized” one in which users can exchange goods directly and across different platforms. The company has made a big bet on crypto and blockchain and supports digital assets like nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, which aim to let users prove ownership of virtual items.
Improbable will support numerous forms of payment and tokens, and may one day partner with a third-party project to bring in a digital token to support and enable the network. However, this token wouldn’t be created or issued by Improbable or M2, Improbable said.
The aim is for MSquared to incorporate interoperability, so users could transfer content and assets across different worlds and platforms — sort of like a “European Union of the metaverse,” Narula said.
That doesn’t mean it won’t have aspects of centralization, and Narula explained that some parts of its virtual universe would require centralized controls to prevent people from abusing its systems.
Civil rights campaigners and regulators have raised fears about the metaverse exacerbating some of the ills of the web. Improbable launched its own think tank devoted to discussing what the metaverse should look like and its social and ethical implications earlier this year.
WATCH: Crypto enthusiasts want to remake the internet with ‘Web3.’ Here’s what that means
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta won its high-profile antitrust case against the Federal Trade Commission, which had accused the company of holding a monopoly in social networking.
In a memorandum opinion released Tuesday, Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., said the FTC failed to prove its argument. The case, initially filed by the FTC five years ago, centered on Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
“Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now,” Boasberg said in the filing. “The Court’s verdict today determines that the FTC has not done so. A judgment so stating shall issue this day.”
Boasberg dismissed the case in 2021, saying the agency didn’t have enough evidence to prove “Facebook holds market power.” In August of that year, the FTC filed an amended complaint with more details about the company’s user numbers and metrics relative to competitors like Snapchat, the now-defunct Google+ social network and Myspace.
After reviewing the amendments, Boasberg in 2022 ruled that the case could proceed, saying the FTC had presented more details than before.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, former operating chief Sheryl Sandberg, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom and other current and former Meta executives all testified in the trial, which began in April.
Meta shares were little changed on Tuesday. The stock is up about 2% for the year, badly underperforming broader indexes and most of its megacap tech peers.
“The Court’s decision today recognizes that Meta faces fierce competition,” the company said in a statement. “Our products are beneficial for people and businesses and exemplify American innovation and economic growth. We look forward to continuing to partner with the Administration and to invest in America.”
The FTC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The ruling comes a little over two months after Google avoided the harshest possible penalty from an antitrust case it lost last year. While Google was found to hold an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta decided the company would not be forced to sell its Chrome browser, bucking the Department of Justice’s request. Google was, however, ordered to loosen its hold on search data.
In the Meta case, the FTC claimed the company shouldn’t have been allowed to buy Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, and the agency called for those units to be divested. The commission also alleged that there were no major alternatives for apps like Facebook and Instagram that people use to communicate with friends and family in a online, social space.
However, a major challenge for the FTC, according to the judge, was in proving that Meta is breaking antitrust law today, not years ago when the primary use of social networks was very different and based on sharing other kinds of content.
“To win the permanent injunction that it seeks here, the FTC must prove a current or imminent legal violation,” he wrote.
Boasberg ultimately sided with Meta’s argument that the technology industry has evolved since the early days of Facebook, and the company now faces a wide variety of competitors like TikTok.
“While each of Meta’s empirical showings can be quibbled with, they all tell a consistent story: people treat TikTok and YouTube as substitutes for Facebook and Instagram, and the amount of competitive overlap is economically important,” Boasberg wrote. “Against that unmistakable pattern, the FTC offers no empirical evidence of substitution whatsoever.”
Big changes in social
Much of Judge Boasberg’s conclusion was built on the transformation that’s taken place in the social media market in recent years and Meta’s changing position within it. User trends have moved heavily in the direction of video, where TikTok and YouTube have massive user bases and huge network effects.
“The most-used part of Meta’s apps is thus indistinguishable from the offerings on TikTok and YouTube,” Boasberg wrote.
Boasberg explained that there was enough evidence to show “that consumers are reallocating massive amounts of time from Meta’s apps” to those services and others, which has “forced Meta to invest gobs of cash to keep up.”
“Meta is not a monopolist insulated from competition,” he wrote. “The Court finds the evidence favoring Meta on this issue both credible and convincing.”
Boasberg also cited various documents and testimony from “industry insiders” that show how other tech companies like TikTok and YouTube viewed Meta as serious competition.
“TikTok and YouTube tracked Meta’s products as competitive threats,” Boasberg wrote.
WATCH: FTC chair on independence
A Waymo autonomous self-driving Jaguar taxi drives along a street on March 14, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images
Waymo on Tuesday said it will bring its robotaxi service to new cities in Texas and Florida in 2026.
The Alphabet-owned company said it plans to start operating its vehicles with no human driver assistants in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Miami and Orlando in the coming weeks before opening service in those markets to the public next year, the company said in a blog.
“Waymo has entered a new phase of commercial scale, doubling the number of cities we operate without a human specialist in the car,” Waymo Chief Product Officer Saswat Panigrahi said in an emailed statement Tuesday.
Waymo had previously announced plans to launch its robotaxi service in Dallas and Miami in 2026, but Tuesday was the first time the company said it planned to launch service next year in the other cities. Waymo will first offer fully autonomous trips to its employees in those markets, a spokesperson said.
The company has been gearing up to expand its paid robotaxis service in 2026. The company previously announced plans to expand to Detroit, Las Vegas, Nashville, San Diego, Washington, D.C., and London in 2026.
Waymo has also begun testing vehicles in New York City and Tokyo.
Last week, Waymo began offering freeway routes in the San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles markets. The Google sister company will gradually extend freeway trips to more riders and locations over time.
Already, Waymo operates its paid robotaxi service in Austin, San Francisco, Phoenix, Atlanta and Los Angeles. The company has provided more than 10 million paid rides since first launching in 2020, the company said in May.
Waymo’s Florida and Texas expansion announcement comes the same day that Amazon-owned Zoox began allowing select San Francisco users to hail its driverless vehicles. San Francisco is the second market where Zoox now offers a free service, after its launch in Las Vegas in September. Zoox has deployed a fleet of 50 robotaxis between San Francisco and Las Vegas, the company told CNBC in September.
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