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Herman Narula, co-founder and CEO of Improbable, speaks during a session at the Web Summit in Lisbon.

Henrique Casinhas | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Metaverse company Improbable has sold one of its key gaming ventures to London-listed video game developer Keywords Studios for £76.5 million ($97.1 million).

The company closed the deal to sell The Multiplayer Group (MPG), a multiplayer game services firm, to Keywords on Sunday, an Improbable spokesperson told CNBC.

Based in Ireland, Keywords owns more than 70 studios in locations including Los Angeles, France, Brazil, Mexico and Spain. The firm mainly develops games for third-party developers.

Keywords’ shares have fallen around 49% year-to-date. It has been on an acquisition spree lately, earmarking 91.9 million euros ($100 million) to new takeovers.

That led to a shift from a net cash position at the end of last year to a net debt position of €11.4 million as of June 30.

Keywords also reported earnings per share of 18.48 euro cents in its half-year results for the period to June 30, down 40% year over year.

Keywords said its acquisition of MPG was funded primarily through cash and its existing revolving credit facility, and would contribute double-digit revenue growth in 2024.

Keywords expects the transaction to be earnings per share accretive in its first full year post-acquisition.

MPG was founded in 2018 and is known for behind-the-scenes work on games such as Fallout 76 and Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond.

Herman Narula, Improbable’s co-founder and CEO, told CNBC the transaction was part of its “venture builder” strategy, through which it invests in or acquires gaming and metaverse-related teams with the option of expanding or spinning them off at a later point.

“The thought was, if we understand multiplayer well, and we understand metaverses, maybe we can spot opportunities where we can bring things in the den that we can do well with. And then, at the right time, if it makes sense, to either keep growing them or potentially spin them out,” Narula told CNBC in an exclusive interview.

“It became clear that working with MPG and bringing them in house would have let us learn a colossal amount and help them grow.”

Crypto enthusiasts want to remake the internet with 'Web3.' Here's what that means

Improbable acquired MPG in 2019, and it has grown dramatically since. Employee numbers rose sixfold in the past four years to 360.

And MPG’s valuation has more than doubled to £76.5 million from Improbable’s original purchase price of £30 million.

While the move suggests a potential scaling back of Improbable’s gaming-related investments, Narula disputed the idea that a sale of MPG marks any sort of retrenchment from that space.

“We’re not in any way selling any technology, or in any way ceasing to operate with games companies,” Narula said. “MPG provide a very specific, specialised service.”

A series of games built on Improbable’s original SpatialOS technology have been canceled in recent years.

They include the open-world game Nostos, developed by NetEase, Worlds Adrift, made by Bossa Studios, and the console version of Scavengers, a game developed by Midwinter Entertainment.

Midwinter was sold by Improbable earlier this year to Behaviour Interactive.

Morpheus, a technology platform developed by Improbable, is now the company’s primary product. Morpheus is designed to host mass-scale multiplayer online games.

Improbable has hosted new experiences using its Morpheus tech, including virtual Major League Baseball games, and the “Otherside” metaverse developed in partnership with blockchain firm Yuga Labs.

Trying to sell investors on ‘metaverse’

Founded in 2012, Improbable is a British firm that aims to build what it calls a network of metaverses. In June, Improbable launched MSquared, a metaverse creation suite, and granted developers access to the platform.

MSquared includes its own network, tech stack, and open-source metaverse markup language.

What's next for the 'Metaverse'?

The deal to sell MPG, one of Improbable’s many notable bets on gaming, arrives after a series of struggles at the firm.

Improbable has undergone substantial cost reductions.

The firm, which scored a $3.4 billion valuation in October 2022, laid off dozens of staffers late last year after raising substantial sums from SoftBank and Andreessen Horowitz.

But valuations of once buzzy metaverse and Web3-related startups have been knocked this year and last year by waning investor enthusiasm for the space.

Improbable has more recently touted itself as artificial intelligence-enabled, saying this has helped lower costs. The company slashed its losses by 85% in 2022 to £19 million.

‘Tale of two metaverses’

Improbable originally set out to build large-scale computer simulations that have applications in gaming and defense.

But its metaverse bets have now become its main focus.

Improbable sold its defense business to Noia Capital in September, marking an exit from a loss-making venture for the firm.

Narula says he expects to see a “tale of two metaverses” emerge next year. Centralized gaming experiences such as Roblox and Fortnite will be eschewed in favor of decentralized, “Web3” metaverses, Narula said.

Web3 refers to the idea of a more decentralized and open version of the web, outside the control of a handful of powerful tech companies like Amazon and Meta.

Blockchain is a key technology involved.

“Ultimately, they [Roblox and Fortnite] are games with different modes made by users and by brands. But people can’t build businesses that they have control over, or that can do commercial things that would be appropriate,” Narula said.

“The other branch of the metaverse, which is driven in some ways by Web3 and in other ways by companies like ours … is really about creating a network of sovereign metaverses.”

Analysts have expressed skepticism about the ability for Improbable to commercialize its technology, not least owing to the technical limitations and high costs involved.

“The jury is still out if they have a viable business model going forward, or whether the reality will ever match the ‘virtual’ hype,” Greg Martin, co-founder and managing director of Rainmaker Securities, a private market trading firm, told CNBC.

Narula said he is hoping to sign up many more partners for MSquared in the future.

Improbable, which is focusing on putting on large-scale metaverse events, ran 30 such gatherings in 2023, up from only three last year. The company plans to raise that number to 300 in 2024.

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Elon Musk’s X temporarily down for tens of thousands of users

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Elon Musk's X temporarily down for tens of thousands of users

Elon Musk looks on as U.S. President Donald Trump meets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 21, 2025.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

The Elon Musk-owned social media platform X experienced a brief outage on Saturday morning, with tens of thousands of users reportedly unable to use the site.

About 25,000 users reported issues with the platform, according to the analytics platform Downdetector, which gathers data from users to monitor issues with various platforms.

Roughly 21,000 users reported issues just after 8:30 a.m. ET, per the analytics platform.

The issues appeared to be largely resolved by around 9:55 a.m., when about 2,000 users were reporting issues with the platform.

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X did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Additional information on the outage was not available.

Musk, the billionaire owner of SpaceX and Tesla, acquired X, formerly known as Twitter in 2022.

The site has had a number of widespread outages since the acquisition.

The site experienced another outage in March, which Musk attributed at the time to a “massive cyberattack.”

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk wrote in a post at the time.

This is breaking news. Check back for updates

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Companies turn to AI to navigate Trump tariff turbulence

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Companies turn to AI to navigate Trump tariff turbulence

Artificial intelligence robot looking at futuristic digital data display.

Yuichiro Chino | Moment | Getty Images

Businesses are turning to artificial intelligence tools to help them navigate real-world turbulence in global trade.

Several tech firms told CNBC say they’re deploying the nascent technology to visualize businesses’ global supply chains — from the materials that are used to form products, to where those goods are being shipped from — and understand how they’re affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.

Last week, Salesforce said it had developed a new import specialist AI agent that can “instantly process changes for all 20,000 product categories in the U.S. customs system and then take action on them” as needed, to help navigate changes to tariff systems.

Engineers at the U.S. software giant used the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, a 4,400-page document of tariffs on goods imported to the U.S., to inform answers generated by the agent.

“The sheer pace and complexity of global tariff changes make it nearly impossible for most businesses to keep up manually,” Eric Loeb, executive vice president of government affairs at Salesforce, told CNBC. “In the past, companies might have relied on small teams of in-house experts to keep pace.”

Firms say that AI systems are enabling them to take decisions on adjustments to their global supply chains much faster.

Andrew Bell, chief product officer of supply chain management software firm Kinaxis, said that manufacturers and distributors looking to inform their response to tariffs are using his firm’s machine learning technology to assess their products and the materials that go into them, as well as external signals like news articles and macroeconomic data.

“With that information, we can start doing some of those simulations of, here is a particular part that is in your build material that has a significant tariff. If you switched to using this other part instead, what would the impact be overall?” Bell told CNBC.

‘AI’s moment to shine’

Trump’s tariffs list — which covers dozens of countries — has forced companies to rethink their supply chains and pricing, with the likes of Walmart and Nike already raising prices on some products. The U.S. imported about $3.3 trillion of goods in 2024, according to census data.

Uncertainty from the U.S. tariff measures “actually probably presents AI’s moment to shine,” Zack Kass, a futurist and former head of OpenAI’s go-to-market strategy, told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro at the Ambrosetti Forum in Italy last month.

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“If you wonder how hard things could get without AI vis-a-vis automation, and what would happen in a world where you can’t just employ a bunch of people overnight, AI presents this alternative proposal,” he added.

Nagendra Bandaru, managing partner and global head of technology services at Indian IT giant Wipro, said clients are using the company’s agentic AI solutions “to pivot supplier strategies, adjust trade lanes, and manage duty exposure dynamically as policy landscapes evolve.”

Wipro says it uses a range of AI systems — both proprietary and supplied by third parties — from large language models to traditional machine learning and computer vision techniques to inspect physical assets in cross-border transit.

‘Not a silver bullet’

While it preferred to keep company names confidential, Wipro said that firms using its AI products to navigate Trump’s tariffs range from a Fortune 500 electronics manufacturer with factories in Asia to an automotive parts supplier exporting to Europe and North America.

“AI is a powerful enabler — but not a silver bullet,” Bandaru told CNBC. “It doesn’t replace trade policy strategy, it enhances it by transforming global trade from a reactive challenge into a proactive, data-driven advantage.”

AI was already a key investment priority for global firms prior to Trump’s sweeping tariff announcements on April. Nearly three-quarters of business leaders ranked AI and generative AI in their top three technologies for investment in 2025, according to a report by Capgemini published in January.

“There are a number of ways AI can assist companies dealing with the tariffs and resulting uncertainty.  But any AI solution’s success will be predicated on the quality of the data it has access to,” Ajay Agarwal, partner at Bain Capital Ventures, told CNBC.

The venture capitalist said that one of his portfolio companies, FourKites, uses supply chain network data with AI to help firms understand the logistics impacts of adjusting suppliers due to tariffs.

“They are working with a number of Fortune 500 companies to leverage their agents for freight and ocean to provide this level of visibility and intelligence,” Agarwal said.

“Switching suppliers may reduce tariffs costs, but might increase lead times and transportation costs,” he added. “In addition, the volatility of the tariffs [has] severely impacted the rates and capacity available in both the ocean and the domestic freight networks.”

WATCH: Former OpenAI exec says tariffs ‘present AI’s moment to shine’

Former OpenAI exec says tariffs 'present AI's moment to shine'

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Amazon’s Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

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Amazon's Zoox robotaxi unit issues second software recall in a month after San Francisco crash

A Zoox autonomous robotaxi in San Francisco, California, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon‘s Zoox robotaxi unit issued a voluntary recall of its software for the second time in a month following a recent crash in San Francisco.

On May 8, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi was turning at low speed when it was struck by an electric scooter rider after braking to yield at an intersection. The person on the scooter declined medical attention after sustaining minor injuries as a result of the collision, Zoox said.

“The Zoox vehicle was stopped at the time of contact,” the company said in a blog post. “The e-scooterist fell to the ground directly next to the vehicle. The robotaxi then began to move and stopped after completing the turn, but did not make further contact with the e-scooterist.”

Zoox said it submitted a voluntary software recall report to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday.

A Zoox spokesperson said the notice should be published on the NHTSA website early next week. The recall affected 270 vehicles, the spokesperson said.

The NHTSA said in a statement it had received the recall notice and that the agency “advises road users to be cautious in the vicinity of vehicles because drivers may incorrectly predict the travel path of a cyclist or scooter rider or come to an unexpected stop.”

If an autonomous vehicle continues to move after contact with any nearby vulnerable road user, it risks causing harm or further harm. In the AV industry, General Motors-backed Cruise exited the robotaxi business after a collision in which one of its vehicles injured a pedestrian who had been struck by a human-driven car and was then rolled over by the Cruise AV.

Zoox’s May incident comes roughly two weeks after the company announced a separate voluntary software recall following a recent Las Vegas crash. In that incident, an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi collided with a passenger vehicle, resulting in minor damage to both vehicles.

The company issued a software recall for 270 of its robotaxis in order to address a defect with its automated driving system that could cause it to inaccurately predict the movement of another car, increasing the “risk of a crash.”

Amazon acquired Zoox in 2020 for more than $1 billion, announcing at the time that the deal would help bring the self-driving technology company’s “vision for autonomous ride-hailing to reality.”

While Zoox is in a testing and development stage with its AVs on public roads in the U.S., Alphabet’s Waymo is already operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, and is ramping up in Atlanta.

Tesla is promising it will launch its long-delayed robotaxis in Austin next month, and, if all goes well, plans to expand after that to San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Antonio, Texas.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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Tesla's decade-long journey to robotaxis

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