Multiverse has raised $70 million in primary funding. With this fresh cash injection, Multiverse seeks to create Europe’s infrastructure for popularising workforce AI. It’s a long-overdue solution to a painful bottleneck for many enterprise business users who haven’t yet had time to realise value from their massive digital outlay.
The raise was led by Schroders Capital with strong participation from a prominent syndicate of existing investors, including General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Index Ventures, BOND, StepStone Group and D1 Capital Partners.
This Series E round will have valued the London edtech company at a huge $2.1 billion, a remarkable $400 million hike in valuation from its Series D round at $1.7 billion during 2022.
Bridging the Enterprise AI Gap
Founded in 2016 by CEO Euan Blair, Multiverse has spent nearly a decade redefining workforce training through modern, data-driven professional apprenticeships. However, the company’s recent roadmap shifts focus toward a more urgent corporate dilemma: the glaring disconnect between software acquisition and human capability.
“There are companies that desperately need the benefits AI can bring. There are AI companies. What has been missing is the layer that bridges the two,” Blair stated. “Getting outcomes from AI and unlocking productivity is not just a technology problem. It is a people problem.”
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While enterprise AI spending has surged, doubling globally according to current industry indexes, many CEOs note that a severe skills gap remains the second-largest barrier to implementation, trailing only behind regulatory compliance.
Rather than following the tech narrative of displacing workers, Multiverse’s thesis leans heavily into human expansion, proving that the ultimate ROI of an AI deployment depends on how effectively the existing workforce can operate the tools.
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Surging Growth and Financial Health
The $70 million raise is a good time for the tech scale-up, as it is also experiencing strong operational performance. Multiverse experienced a 50% YoY revenue growth, its third consecutive year of accelerating top-line growth; this time in cash-positive territories from Jan. to Mar. 2022.
Intended to share the windfall, Multiverse announced that all employees, irrespective of hierarchy, were being given the opportunity to participate in the offering.
The platform’s expansion has consequently been underpinned by strong enterprise adoption. To date, Multiverse has provided over £2 billion of validated ROI for in excess of 1,000 corporates, including household names such as Babcock, Capita, Addison Lee and the AA.
At the same time, the platform has bolstered its partnerships with software heavyweights such as Microsoft, Palantir and Databricks to build artefacts so practitioners can integrate its training with enterprise-class data infrastructure.
An Aggressive Push into Europe
A significant portion of the fresh $70 million will fund Multiverse’s expansion into mainland Europe. This effort already has a strong foundational anchor: the company’s acquisition of Berlin-based data and AI training provider StackFuel. StackFuel brought a coveted portfolio of German enterprise clients, including Mercedes-Benz, IAV, and Telefónica, along with an ongoing initiative to upskill 100,000 workers across Germany.
The platform’s enterprise tool, Atlas, an artificial intelligence coaching assistant that analyses workforce skills deficiencies against business objectives, has also experienced explosive growth, tripling its daily active users in the last year.
The announcement received the support of senior government officials. The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, commented enthusiastically about the raise, claiming that she believes that Multiverse is an excellent British company to have at the forefront of the global race.
While European companies come under increasing pressure to cut back on their AI spend, an even stronger balance sheet means Multiverse is an indispensable gatekeeper to automated work in the future.
