Four years. £17 million in total US revenue. A peak of £5.8 million in a single year. For a company valued at $1.7 billion, Multiverse's American expansion barely registered.

In 2021, the UK apprenticeship-to-career platform rebranded from its original name WhiteHat, raised $44 million, and opened a headquarters in New York City. The bet: bring the British apprenticeship model to the world’s largest economy. Follow the path of successful European software companies. Enter the US market to break the local growth ceiling and access deeper capital markets.

Companies House filings show how that bet unfolded:

Source: Companies House

Against last reported (March 2025) group revenue of £79.6 million (~$100 million), the US never exceeded 6% of the business. Revenue fell in 2024 before a modest recovery.

So when Multiverse acquired StackFuel — a 79-person data and AI training company in Berlin — in January 2026, it was more than a geographic expansion. It signaled a strategic pivot. America is out. Europe is in.

“Europe is a much better opportunity,” Euan Blair, Multiverse’s founder and CEO, told journalist Mike Butcher in a recent interview. American companies hire fast and fire fast. “The idea of an apprenticeship was pretty alien in America,” Blair said. The “employment at will” model, where either party can end the relationship at any moment, weakens the case for long-term investment in employee development. Employers often prefer to hire workers who are already trained rather than invest deeply in reskilling their own workforce.

In Europe, the dynamic shifts. A stronger social contract between employer and employee creates expectations of investment and tenure. Governments fund training. Companies use it. Workers remain long enough for the investment to pay off.

It is a compelling thesis. But for Multiverse, the European pivot raises deeper questions — about business model, valuation, and what kind of company it ultimately is.

The US retreat is not Multiverse’s first reinvention.

Blair and co-founder Sophie Adelman launched the company in 2016 as WhiteHat — positioned explicitly as an alternative to university for school-leavers. The vision: 18-year-olds entering digital roles at companies like Google and major banks. No tuition fees. No student debt. Real salaries from day one.

“If I’d had the option when I was 18 of doing digital marketing at Google, would I have leapt at that chance? Yes, absolutely,” Adelman said in 2018.

That mission carried Multiverse through its early fundraising. By 2022, the company had raised $220 million in a Series D, achieved a $1.7 billion valuation, become the first UK apprenticeship provider to award degrees, and opened its New York headquarters. The US was meant to be the growth engine. It wasn’t.

Meanwhile, back home, the school-leaver focus was quietly deprioritised. In October 2023, City A.M. and BusinessCloud reported that Multiverse had “quietly shelved” its original programme. Under-19 apprenticeship starts fell to their lowest level since the pandemic. The new focus shifted toward levy-funded corporate apprenticeships — particularly Level 4 Data Analyst and Business Analyst programmes, which have historically driven the majority of learner starts and enabled rapid revenue scaling due to their broader eligibility criteria.

The economics help explain the shift. The UK Apprenticeship Levy — a 0.5% payroll tax on employers with annual pay bills above £3 million, introduced in 2017 — created a guaranteed pool of training funding. Companies either spend it on approved programmes or lose it. Multiverse repositioned to capture that spend.

Revenue grew from £10.1 million in 2021 to £79.6 million in 2024. Apprenticeship starts increased 52%, narrowing the gap with market leader Lifetime Training from over 8,400 to just 1,070 during the year ending March 2025.

The pattern is revealing.

When the school-leaver market proved harder to scale, Multiverse followed government funding into corporate upskilling. When the US market proved resistant, Multiverse followed government funding into continental Europe.

StackFuel fits this playbook precisely. Germany’s Bildungsgutschein programme funds 100% of training costs for job seekers through education vouchers. The Qualifications Opportunities Act subsidizes up to 100% of corporate training costs and up to 75% of wages during training. StackFuel was already embedded in both funding streams. Multiverse acquired access to an entirely new government-funded pipeline.

StackFuel raised less than €2 million in total funding over its lifetime. It employs roughly 79 people. The deal — a mix of cash and Multiverse equity — was modest by unicorn standards.

But the underlying business appears stronger than its fundraising history suggests. According to Blair, StackFuel grew revenue 73% year-over-year. It reports a 92% programme completion rate (compared to Multiverse’s 62.2%, slightly below the UK national average of 62.6%, based on Gov.UK data) and counts several enterprise clients among its customer base. 

Blair describes Germany as “Europe’s largest economy yet one of its least digitally transformed.” StackFuel “didn’t have a large cash balance to take bigger bets.” Multiverse provides capital and distribution. StackFuel provides local infrastructure and funding access.

The ambition is to train 100,000 workers. Crucially, the funding infrastructure to support that ambition already exists.

And Germany may be just the beginning. France, Italy, and Spain are building similar employer-training incentive structures. Blair references rising “AI sovereignty” narratives — each European nation seeking its own skills infrastructure. A country-by-country European strategy may prove structurally more aligned than a single broad US expansion attempt.

Multiverse’s top-line growth has been impressive. From £10.1 million in 2021 to £79.6 million in the year ended March 2025 — nearly eightfold growth.

But the cost base has expanded alongside revenue.

According to Companies House filings, Multiverse spent £14.9 million on cost of sales to generate £79.6 million in revenue. However, administrative expenses reached £129.3 million in the same period. Total operating costs were £144.2 million, leaving the company with approximately 18 months of runway based on reported cash balances.

For every £1 spent delivering training, nearly £9 was spent on administration and overhead.

Training businesses are typically constrained by delivery economics: instructors must be hired, content requires constant updating, and competition is intense. Even leading public market comparables reflect this structural ceiling.

Pluralsight, once a flagship tech-training platform, traded at 10–12x revenue at its 2018 IPO. Strong for edtech, but below the 15–30x multiples commanded by software peers at the time. The multiple later fell to roughly 7x as growth decelerated and content costs persisted. Vista Equity Partners took Pluralsight private in 2020 for $3.5 billion, only to write off the entire equity value to zero four years later, and transfer ownership to creditors.

Multiverse, by contrast, was valued at $1.7 billion in 2022 when revenue stood at approximately £27.3 million (~$34 million). That implied roughly a 50x revenue multiple. Even at today’s £79.6 million revenue, the implied multiple would still sit around 17x — assuming valuation parity.

Private investors have priced Multiverse like a scalable software company. That requires belief in software-like margin expansion. But the operating structure looks different.

According to LinkedIn data, Multiverse employs over 160 salespeople. Job advertisements reference MEDDIC methodology, a sales framework widely used in enterprise software firms such as CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks. Sales talent trained in this methodology commands compensation more typical of high-growth SaaS than traditional education providers.

A sophisticated sales engine deployed into markets rich with government funding can drive significant revenue growth. But while the sales function may scale like SaaS, delivery rarely does.

Completion rates add further complexity. In the UK levy system, providers typically receive the majority of payment upon programme completion — often 12–18 months after enrolment. This creates cash-flow timing pressures and incentive tension between sales cycles and revenue recognition.

There is also regulatory risk. Multiverse is rumoured to be undergoing an Ofsted inspection this week. The last time the company was inspected, in 2021, it received an “Outstanding” rating, but at a much smaller scale. Inspection outcomes materially affect reputation, employer confidence, and growth momentum in the levy-funded market. A repeat top rating would reinforce the expansion narrative. A weaker outcome could meaningfully slow it.

The core question is not whether Multiverse can grow. It clearly can. The ‘capability overhang’ between frontier model capabilities and practical implementation in enterprise continues to widen.

The question is whether government-funded training businesses can escape the structural gravity of their cost base and consolidate the market in a winner-take-all fashion, justifying software-like valuations.

Government incentives can create powerful tailwinds. But incentives alone rarely produce enduring monopolies.

Less than half of the UK workforce is employed by levy-paying businesses. While smaller employers can access funding, required co-investment introduces friction into the sale. The number of apprentices per company is typically limited. That caps contract sizes and makes it difficult to support software-equivalent sales compensation structures at scale.

Even within the levy system itself, structural changes may push the market toward modularity rather than consolidation. Proposed “Apprenticeship Units” — shorter, more focused components of full apprenticeship standards — reflect employer demand for faster, sharper interventions. In a world where AI capabilities evolve quarterly, multi-year programmes can feel misaligned with operational reality. While Skills England has yet to define the exact scope and funding mechanics of these Units, the direction of travel suggests increased unbundling of training rather than reinforcement of large, vertically integrated providers.

The addressable pool of frictionless funding is finite. At the same time, adjacent segments are emerging.

Vendor-funded training is expanding rapidly. Software providers such as Microsoft and Google have strong incentives to fund enablement that accelerates product adoption. These programs are shorter, more tactical, and focused on immediate utility rather than multi-year apprenticeship pathways.

Then there is the individual market. Workers seeking to transition into tech, or upgrade their AI skills independently, are increasingly purchasing shorter, affordable courses directly. The rise of LinkedIn-native educators and niche experts selling targeted programs suggests that learning is becoming more modular and self-directed.

These dynamics point toward fragmentation, not consolidation. There will be large players.

But the market structure itself makes it unlikely that one company captures it all.

— Daria