Euan Blair's Multiverse hits $2.1bn valuation with $70M raise for AI workforce training push

Euan Blair start-up valuation of $2.1bn boosts AI workforce training push

Euan Blair's Multiverse has raised $70mn from investors as the London-based education technology start-up pushes into AI training and Europe. The fundraising values the company, which trains and finds placements for apprentices, at $2.1bn, up from $1.7bn when it last raised money in 2022. Schroders Capital, Index Ventures and General Catalyst participated in the new round. The new funding will help Blair, the son of former British prime minister Sir Tony Blair, to expand AI workforce training and grow further across Europe. "What's become clear very fast is that AI is the biggest threat, but also the biggest opportunity the workforce faces," Blair told the FT. "This could either be the great jobs destroyer or it could be the great productivity enhancer." He added: "The only way we're going to tip the scales in favour of the productivity outcome is by training as many workers on the job as possible." As part of its AI push, Multiverse acquired German data and AI training group StackFuel in January for an undisclosed amount. Blair's wife Suzanne Ashman, a venture capitalist, was appointed this month to lead the UK government's £500mn Sovereign AI fund, tasked with investing in homegrown technology. The fund has not invested in Multiverse as part of the round. Blair co-founded Multiverse in 2016, and has trained around 30,000 apprentices with companies including Microsoft, John Lewis and M&S. It employs about 800 staff. The start-up posted turnover of £79.6mn in the year ending March 2025, up from £58.4mn a year prior, according to filings at Companies House. However, annual losses widened to £62.4mn, from £60.9mn the year before. Blair said hitting profitability was now a "near-term" focus, noting that the company had posted its first cash-positive quarter in early 2026. "We are not a million miles away from profitability, and you'll see that when our latest results get published . . . but that cannot come at the expense of growth and investing in our product and capabilities," he said. The fundraise, which also saw Lightspeed Venture Partners and D1 Capital invest, will give all Multiverse employees equity in the company. Blair said the company was not currently considering a listing. "This is a company which can and should be public, but we are not looking to do that in the near term," he said. Multiverse has faced some criticism over low completion rates on its training courses. Department for Education figures released in March showed the completion rate for Multiverse schemes was 52.6 per cent in 2024/25, below the sector average of 65.4 per cent. "We're pretty clear, we don't want to be in the business of training executives on MBA programmes, we are looking to work with frontline workers," Blair said, citing examples such as nurses and warehouse workers. "Realistically, there are barriers to sometimes convincing some of those people that they are the people who will be worst affected if we do not get this right," he added.

Multiverse raises $70m at a $2.1bn valuation to push its AI-adoption pitch across Europe

The round, led by Schroders Capital, follows January's acquisition of Berlin-based StackFuel and 50% year-on-year revenue growth. Customers include the AA, Babcock, and Capital. Multiverse, the London-based AI- and tech-upskilling platform founded by Euan Blair, said on Friday it had raised $70m in primary funding led by Schroders Capital, at a $2.1bn valuation. Existing investors, including General Catalyst, Lightspeed, D1 Capital, Index Ventures, Bond and StepStone Group, joined the round. The new valuation marks a $400m step up from the company's $1.7bn Series D in 2022. Multiverse said revenue grew 50% year-on-year for the third consecutive year of accelerating growth, and the company reported its first cash-positive quarter, from January to March 2026. All employees are being offered equity in connection with the raise. Multiverse is positioning the new round behind a category pitch rather than a product one. Chief executive Euan Blair told the company's blog the firm wants to become 'Europe's AI adoption platform', sitting between the businesses buying AI tools and the workforces meant to use them. In his framing, the missing layer of the AI stack is not another model or another agent runtime; it is the workforce capable of operating them. The European push has a foothold already. In January Multiverse completed the acquisition of StackFuel, a Berlin-based data and AI training provider with corporate customers including Mercedes-Benz, IAV and Telefónica, and a stated goal of training 100,000 German workers in AI skills. StackFuel reports a 92% programme completion rate. Its founders, Leo Marose and Stefan Berntheisel, joined the senior leadership of the combined entity. On the company's own numbers, Multiverse has delivered more than £2bn in verified ROI for over 1,000 employers to date, including Babcock, the AA, Capita and Addison Lee. Atlas, its AI coaching platform, tripled daily active users in the past year. Partnerships have moved upmarket on the tools side, with Microsoft, Palantir and Databricks now named as platform partners. Multiverse is leaning into a familiar enterprise complaint: AI budgets are up, AI returns are uneven. The company cites BCG's 2026 AI Radar, which reports corporate AI spend has doubled since last year, and notes that 'trailblazer' adopters invest about twice as much in workforce upskilling as 'follower' peers. CEOs surveyed by Multiverse named skills gaps as the second-largest barrier to AI adoption, behind only regulation and ahead of data quality. The raise comes with a political signal, of the sort British scale-ups now actively seek. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said in a statement provided by the company that the UK government wants Britain to achieve the fastest rate of AI adoption in the G7, and called Multiverse 'a fantastic example of a British company helping turn that ambition into reality'. The investment, Reeves added, would 'support its expansion across Europe'. Multiverse's thesis cuts across a louder one in the enterprise AI conversation. Where companies including Klarna have frozen hiring on the argument that AI tools let them do more with fewer people, Multiverse is selling employers on the opposite trade: that the value of an AI deployment is determined by how well the existing workforce can operate it. The new round is, in effect, a $70m bet that the latter view is the one enterprise buyers will be writing cheques against next. Multiverse did not name the banks involved or disclose run-rate revenue. The company said the funding would be used to accelerate European expansion, with no further geographic breakdown.

Euan Blair's edtech Multiverse valued at $2.1bn after $70m raise

Formerly known as WhiteHat, Multiverse was last valued at $1.7bn in 2022 following a $220m raise. London-based edtech Multiverse has raised $70m in a round led by Schroders Capital, to accelerate its European expansion. The round places the company at a valuation of $2.1bn. Founded by British businessperson Euan Blair, the round also saw the support of existing investors including General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, D1 Capital Partners, Index Ventures, Bond and StepStone Group. Blair is the son of former UK prime minister Tony Blair. Multiverse said that the funding would ensure that "AI benefits the workplace, rather than displacing it". It was last valued at $1.7bn in 2022 following a $220m raise. Filings from Companies House show that Blair owns around 18.6pc of the business, taking his share post valuation to $392m. This is down from his previous stake of between $425m and $850m in 2022. Multiverse, which was founded under the name WhiteHat in 2016, offers personalised upskilling programmes to support technological adoption. It has an AI coaching platform called Atlas. To date, Multiverse has delivered more than £2bn worth of benefits to more than 1,000 employers, it said. Its clientele includes the likes of Microsoft, Palantir and Databricks. Atlas has tripled daily active users over the last year, the company added. "There are companies who desperately need the benefits AI can bring. There are AI companies. What has been missing is the layer that bridges the two," said CEO Blair. "This investment marks the moment Multiverse defines that category, and takes it across Europe. Getting outcomes from AI and unlocking productivity is not just a technology problem. It is a people problem. We exist to solve it." UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves added: "Multiverse is a fantastic example of a British company helping turn that ambition into reality. This investment will support its expansion across Europe, strengthening a UK firm that is competing globally and equipping people with the skills to make AI work in practice." Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news. Euan Blair, 2023. Image: Village Global via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)