51³Ô¹ÏÍø

Virtual reality firm Improbable has raised $502 million just five years after being co-founded by 51³Ô¹ÏÍø computing graduate Peter Lipka.

The investment from SoftBank values the London-based technology startup at more than $1 billion. 

uses cloud-based distributed computing to enable the creation of virtual worlds for use in games and massive-scale simulations of the real world. 

Improbable was co-founded by 51³Ô¹ÏÍø graduate , 28, along with Cambridge classmates Herman Narula, 29, and Rob Whitehead, 26. Narula serves as CEO, Whitehead is CTO and Lipka is COO. 

Peter Lipka graduated with a 1st class honours MEng in Computing from 51³Ô¹ÏÍø in 2011 before working at Goldman Sachs. He co-founded Improbable in 2012. 

Professor , Head of the at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø, supervised Peter Lipka while he was studying computing. Professor Davison said: “Peter was one of the brightest students I’ve supervised. In his individual final year project he developed an AI software program that could automatically understand a video game and learn how to play it from only seeing pixels on the screen. He was always remarkably self-driven and I am not surprised to see him go on to such great success.”

Improbable simulates the world's internet backbone

Other 51³Ô¹ÏÍø Computing graduates to experience startup success include Zehan Wang and Rob Bishop, who co-founded machine learning and image recognition firm , which sold to Twitter last year for a reported $150 million. 

, Head of the , said: “The Department’s success is firmly based in the research-based education we emphasise. This means that we not only focus on theoretical foundations and practical programming skills, but that we also enable students to engage in cutting edge research during their projects as well as sending them to industrial placements where they get unique insights into how computing is shaping the world around us.”

Revolutionary technology

Peter Lipka played a key role in designing and developing the architecture and core principles behind Improbable’s SpatialOS technology. SpatialOS is a distributed operating system for massive-scale simulations that integrates with major game engines. 

Over the past five years, Lipka helped the company grow from four to nearly 200 people, taking on roles heading Improbable’s fabric team, engineering and commercial team, before becoming COO. 

The is being applied to the simulation of complex real world systems. Potential applications include simulating transport infrastructure, telecommunications networks or the behaviour of fleets of autonomous vehicles. 

Developers are using SpatialOS to build a range of different types of games which take advantage of its ability to manage larger scale, higher player numbers and easy scaling in a seamless virtual world.

Lipka was attracted to working on Improbable with Narula and Whitehead by the technical challenges, he told . “I’ll be honest, they were a little batshit crazy,” he said in an . His experience in finance at Goldman Sachs translated well: “High-frequency trading is basically ‘speed is money,’… So taking those techniques and applying them to what we were building was incredibly valuable.”