Improbable backs Otomato with USD $2 million DeFi bet

KAREN JOY BACUDO

Finance Editor

Improbable has invested USD $2 million in decentralised finance monitoring company Otomato, in one of the first external investments tied to its current focus on AI and web3 companies.

Otomato develops a service that tracks users’ on-chain positions and sends alerts when risks, costs or trading opportunities change. The product is aimed at decentralised finance users who manage assets across multiple protocols and blockchains and want to avoid having to check several dashboards at once.

The funding will support product development, expansion across more chains and market segments, and user growth. Backing from Improbable also includes operational support for go-to-market efforts, technical infrastructure, AI development, finance, human resources, legal, and compliance. Otomato will retain control of its intellectual property and product roadmap.

Founded by Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Clement Hecquet and Chief Operating Officer Dylan Breugne, Otomato lets users submit wallet addresses so the system can identify positions across lending markets, tokens, NFTs and prediction markets. It currently monitors activity on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base and HyperEVM.

Since launching as a Telegram bot, Otomato says it has grown without paid marketing. It reports more than 2,000 users, with over 1,500 actively receiving alerts, and says it integrates with more than 10 protocols, including AAVE, Pendle, Uniswap, Morpho, Euler and Hyperliquid.

The company later released a mobile app on Apple’s App Store and Google Play. It also highlighted a campaign tied to the HyperEVM ecosystem that, it said, attracted 3,690 unique users in five days, converted 81.6% of them into Telegram bot users and was shared 971 times on X without paid promotion.

Growth focus

The investment offers clearer insight into how Improbable is positioning itself following the launch of the Somnia Layer 1 blockchain, built on technology developed by the group. Improbable says Somnia has since reached a peak valuation of USD $1.9 billion and that it has delivered total exits of more than USD $179 million to date.

The Otomato deal reflects a venture-building model rather than a passive investment approach. Improbable describes itself as working alongside founders while leaving long-term control with the companies it backs.

That approach was central to its rationale for the investment.

“The opportunity Otomato is pursuing is enormous. DeFi is becoming the back-end of a larger AI-powered economy, and the first team to build the intelligence layer that understands what users actually hold and tells them what matters has the potential to win an entire category. Otomato gives customers agency and full control of their positions, something that they were lacking before. What convinced us to back Clement, Dylan, and the team was their drive. They shipped a product users genuinely love, grew it virally with no paid spend, and they are moving faster than almost any team I have seen at this stage. That is exactly the kind of founder we set out to build with,” said Herman Narula, Co-Founder and CEO of Improbable.

Market challenge

Active users of decentralised finance products often hold positions across several blockchain networks and applications, creating a fragmented view of risk. Services that promise alerts have emerged to address that problem. Still, Otomato argues that broad notifications can create too much noise and fail to reflect what an individual user actually owns.

Its product is positioned as a more personalised model, focused on portfolio-level monitoring rather than general market warnings. That places it in a part of the crypto software market that seeks to make increasingly complex trading and lending activities easier for retail and more active users to follow.

For Improbable, the investment extends a record of building businesses around emerging technology themes beyond its earlier work in gaming, virtual worlds and defence. The UK-based company has spent more than a decade developing and commercialising software businesses and is now concentrating more heavily on ventures linked to AI and web3.

Hecquet said practical support from Improbable had already influenced the company’s direction. 

“We chose Improbable because they are builders that bring more than a passive check. From day one we have had hands-on support on go-to-market, product, and scaling decisions from an executive team that has done this before. That is what moves a company like ours from 2,000 users to millions, and it is what made the decision easy. We look forward to building together as we scale Otomato,” said Clement Hecquet, CEO and Co-Founder of Otomato.