Here's a question most UK founders haven't asked: if your company pays into the Apprenticeship Levy every month and can only spend it on 18-month programmes your team won't finish, what exactly is the point? From April 2026, the government finally admitted it wasn't working. And Euan Blair had already built the product that would benefit.
On May 15, 2026, Multiverse announced a $70 million raise at a $2.1 billion valuation - a $400 million step up from its last round in 2022. Revenue has grown 50% year-on-year for three consecutive years. It posted its first cash-positive quarter between January and March 2026. The round was led by Schroders Capital, with General Catalyst, Lightspeed, Index Ventures, D1 Capital, Bond, and StepStone all joining in.
The headlines wrote themselves: unicorn founder, prime minister's son, British tech success story. What got far less attention was the specific reason this raise made strategic sense right now, so the timing wasn't accidental.
The Levy Nobody Could Spend
Think back to 2017, when the government introduced the Apprenticeship Levy, a mandatory 0.5% payroll contribution from employers with a wage bill over £3 million, and told employers they could use those funds for workforce training.
The catch was that you could only spend it on full apprenticeship programmes, which meant 12 to 18 months minimum, formal qualifications, structured off-the-job learning time.
For a fast-growing tech company trying to upskill a sales team in Salesforce automation or get its data team comfortable with AI tools - a full apprenticeship was overkill. So the money sat unspent, billions of pounds, quietly expiring, returned to the government every year, used for almost nothing.
Ask the head of L&D at any mid-sized UK company, and they'll tell you the same thing: "We have levy funds and we can't find good ways to spend them."
That inefficiency is exactly what the government overhauled in April 2026.
The Policy Shift That Changed Everything
From April 2026, the Apprenticeship Levy officially became the Growth and Skills Levy. The name change matters less than what it unlocks: for the first time, employers can use levy funds for short, modular courses, not just full apprenticeships.
The government was specific about where it wants the money to go: digital, artificial intelligence, and engineering. In practice, this is Growth and Skills Levy AI training — courses employers can now fund without committing to an 18-month programme.
Short sprints. Targeted skills. No 18-month commitment required.
Levy fund expiry has also been cut from 24 months to 12. That sounds like bad news, but it's actually pressure that creates urgency: employers who were quietly ignoring their unspent levy now have a reason to act fast or lose the money entirely.
Think about what this means in practice. A UK logistics company with £50,000 in unspent levy funds, a workforce that needs to understand automation, and a 12-month window before that money disappears.
Before April 2026, they had no good options. After April 2026, they can buy a structured AI upskilling programme, run it over three months, and actually use the money they've been paying in for years.
We think this is one of the most consequential skills policy changes since the levy was introduced, and it's barely been covered outside HR trade press.
Where Multiverse Was Already Standing
Here's the thing about Euan Blair: he spotted this coming. The pivot to short-course AI training didn't happen until after the policy announcement; it was already underway.
In January 2026, Multiverse acquired StackFuel - a Berlin-based data and AI training company - giving it immediate European modular curriculum capability. It formed partnerships with Microsoft, Palantir, and Databricks, positioning itself as the layer that sits between enterprise AI tools and the workforces meant to use them. Its Atlas AI coaching platform - the product designed for exactly the kind of short, adaptive, on-the-job learning the new levy funds - tripled its daily active users in the past year.
When Blair said at the raise announcement: "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"
He wasn't describing a vague aspiration, he was actually describing a product already built for a funding mechanism that had just opened.He was describing a product already built for the Growth and Skills Levy funding mechanism that had just opened.
Babcock International, the AA, and Capita are already customers.
Between them, they represent exactly the kind of large, levy-paying employers sitting on unspent funds and facing board-level pressure to show AI adoption. The total verified ROI Multiverse claims to have generated for its employer base now exceeds £2 billion.
The Honest Picture
We'd be doing you a disservice if we stopped there, though.
Multiverse is still loss-making, as revenues reached £79.6 million in the year to March 2025 - up sharply from £58.4 million the year before - but losses came in at £63.3 million. They actually widened slightly year-on-year, the cash-positive quarter in early 2026 is a genuine milestone, but annual profitability remains some distance away.
This is a company at an inflection point, not a finished story, so the $2.1 billion valuation bets that the Growth and Skills Levy will drive a step-change in revenue over the next 18 months and if it does, the losses narrow quickly. If the policy takes longer to move through the market than expected, or if competitors move faster than anticipated , the picture gets harder.
It's also worth saying: Euan Blair didn't build Multiverse alone.
Co-founder Sophie Adelman, who stepped down as co-CEO in 2023, was instrumental in the company's early growth from its WhiteHat origins. The "prime minister's son builds unicorn" narrative tends to erase that.
What This Means for UK Founders
So why does any of this matter if you're not building an edtech company?
Two reasons.
First, if you employ people and pay the levy, the Growth and Skills Levy just changed what you can buy with it. Short AI and digital courses are now levy-eligible. If you've been sitting on unspent funds and most medium-sized UK businesses have been, this is the moment to actually use them. This is exactly the kind of Growth and Skills Levy AI training the reforms were designed to unlock.
The 12-month expiry window means the decision can't be deferred indefinitely.
Second, the broader pattern is worth paying attention to. Multiverse's success isn't really about edtech, it is about a founder who looked at a policy the market had largely given up on, identified the structural change that would make it work, and positioned his product to catch it before it arrived.
That's not an edtech strategy, that's a founder strategy, and it's available to anyone paying close enough attention.
The Growth and Skills Levy just opened a window, but the question is who else has been watching.
You might also like reading: Digital Sovereignty Paradox: Why UK Tech Needs Global Integration
Sources: Multiverse official funding announcement (May 15, 2026) · Tech.eu — Multiverse $70M raise (May 16, 2026) · Wikipedia — Multiverse company financials (updated July 2026) · GOV.UK Growth and Skills Levy official guidance (April 2026) · Grant Thornton — Apprenticeship Levy reforms analysis (December 2025) · TESS Group — 2026 levy changes hub (May 2026) · House of Commons Library — Skills policy in England (June 2026) · Beauhurst — Top 100 UK EdTech companies 2026 · EdTech Innovation Hub — Multiverse funding analysis (May 18, 2026)
