Spanish AI Firm Multiverse Computing Targets €500M Funding Round at €1.5 Billion Valuation

AI Firm Multiverse Said to Hit €1.5 Billion Value With New Funds

Multiverse Computing's annual recurring revenue reached €100 million in January, two of the people said. Multiverse Computing SL, a Spanish artificial intelligence software company, is in discussions to raise about €500 million ($595 million) in fresh funding, according to people familiar with the matter. The round is expected to value the company at more than €1.5 billion, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. The financing is expected to complete during the first half of the year and will bring in new backers, one of the people said. Multiverse Computing declined to comment. San Sebastian, Spain-based Multiverse Computing was founded in 2019 and aims to make the rollout of AI cheaper and more efficient for enterprises, shrinking large language models so they consume less energy and computing power. Get the Tech Newsletter bundle. Get the Tech Newsletter bundle. Get the Tech Newsletter bundle. Bloomberg's subscriber-only tech newsletters, and full access to all the articles they feature. Bloomberg's subscriber-only tech newsletters, and full access to all the articles they feature. Bloomberg's subscriber-only tech newsletters, and full access to all the articles they feature. Bloomberg may send me offers and promotions. Plus Signed UpPlus Sign UpPlus Sign Up By submitting my information, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. The round would add Multiverse Computing to Europe's growing ranks of AI unicorn startups valued above $1 billion. Investors are still racing to back these companies, even as they voice concerns about a bubble, as they bet on continued adoption of AI. Funds on the continent that can't back US players such as OpenAI still have a chance at making good returns from European teams building credible models, software businesses and applications. Multiverse Computing's annual recurring revenue, an indicative metric used by software startups to demonstrate growth, reached €100 million in January, two of the people said. ARR is often calculated by a startup taking one month's recurring revenue, such as subscriptions, and multiplying it by 12. The company is banking on growing demand for more efficient AI models, driven by the construction of new AI "gigafactories" in Europe, plus the implementation of the technology on devices ranging from satellites and drones to phones. Multiverse Computing is also positioning itself to ride the wave of current interest in quantum computing. The startup's team includes computational scientists and quantum physicists, and it says it has partnered with "major quantum hardware manufacturers" for software development. Quantum computers encode data in qubits, rather than the bits used in classical computing, with the goal of solving certain problems faster than conventional machines. Useful quantum computers and applications are thought to be at least five or 10 years away. Multiverse Computing's existing investors include HP Tech Ventures, Forgepoint Capital, CDP Venture Capital, and the Spanish government's digital investment holding company SETT.

Report: AI model compression startup Multiverse seeking €500M funding round - SiliconANGLE

Report: AI model compression startup Multiverse seeking €500M funding round Multiverse Computing SL, a startup with technology that reduces the hardware footprint of artificial intelligence models, is reportedly raising new capital. Sources told Bloomberg today the Spanish company is seeking €500 million, or about $594.4 million. The round is expected to value Multiverse at €1.5 billion. The report comes about 8 months after the software maker raised $215 million from a consortium that included Toshiba Corp., HP Tech Ventures and others. At least some of those investors will likely participate in the round that Multiverse is raising. Additionally, Bloomberg's sources stated that several new backers are expected to join. Multiverse's flagship product is a platform called CompactifAI that reduces the amount of infrastructure needed to run AI models. According to the company, the software can halve training times and speed up inference by 25%. Multiverse also promises to reduce models' storage footprint in the process. An AI model considers multiple data points when making a decision. Some of those data points influence the processing workflow more than others. A model tasked with predicting a retailer's annual revenue, for example, might give more weight to its historical sales numbers than the final performance of rivals. The model components that determine the extent to which different data point influence a decision are called weights. They're stored in a mathematical structure called a weight matrix. According to Multiverse, its CompactifAI platform reduces AI models' hardware requirements by turning their weight matrices into tensor networks. Those are mathematical objects that are most commonly used to study quantum mechanical phenomena. The process of turning weight matrices into tensor networks introduces errors into AI models. CompactifAI mitigates those errors by retraining a neural network after compressing it, a process that Multiverse calls healing. The task can be carried out relatively quickly and requires only a handful of graphics cards. In a May 2024 paper, Multiverse detailed that its researchers used CompactifAI to compress the Llama 2 7B language model. They combined the platform with a model optimization method called quantization. Multiverse says that it managed to reduce Llama 2 7B's memory footprint by 93% at the expense of a 3% drop in AI output accuracy. The company offers CompactifAI alongside a platform called Singularity. It provides access to AI models that automate industry-specific use cases across several major verticals. One module can detect factory equipment malfunctions, while another helps financial professionals make investment decisions. There's also a cybersecurity engine that detects malicious network traffic. Multiverse says that its products are used by more than 100 organizations. The company's installed base includes Allianz SE, Moody's Corp. and several other large enterprises. Customers can install CompactifAI on their infrastructure or use an application programming interface to access popular open-source AI models that have been compressed in advance. Multiverse reportedly plans to close its funding round in the first half of the year.