Improbable has sold its defence division

Games tech firm Improbable has sold its defence division to a group of investors, led by Luxembourg-based Noia Capital.

The deal was announced in a post on the former’s website. No figure has been placed on the deal which sees the arm change ownership with roughly 70 engineers and modellers, as well as contracts with the UK’s Ministry of Defence. This includes Improbable Defence’s Skyral tech, which sounds like a military-sim focused version of its SpatialOS platform. 

“We are very pleased to spin out our Defence business, which we initiated in 2018 and grew to the point of Skyral being a proven capability,” Improbable COO Peter Lipka said.

“We are very confident that with the support of Noia, the business is on a great path moving forward to being one of the first new Prime Contractors in decades in the UK market. Improbable continues to transform to deepen its focus on the metaverse.”

Noia Capital CIO Muhammed Yesilhark added: “Our world grows more complex every day and will require data-driven decision making tools to better navigate through this complexity. In parallel, digital twin synthetic environments emerge as yet another milestone for digital transformation. This talented team has developed a technology uniquely positioned at the intersection of those two interconnected trends, both for defence and enterprise applications.”

In its early days, defence contracts were big money for Improbable. The firm inked deals with the US’ Department of Defence, as well as the UK’s Ministry of Defence.

In recent years, Improbable has pivoted from being mostly a games tech company to going all-in on the metaverse. As such, it has sold many of the studios it has acquired.