Losses at Euan Blair’s edtech unicorn Multiverse have widened by almost £4m in 2022, despite its revenue almost tripling over the same period.
Multiverse, founded in 2016 by former prime minister Tony Blair’s son, is a platform to provide jobs, apprenticeships, and training to people who have not graduated from university.
The company has had no trouble raising funding over the years, having received an investment of £176m in June of last year, leaving the company with a unicorn valuation of £1.36bn.
Its latest financial filing showed revenue rose to £27.2m in 2022, almost three times the £10.1m the year prior.
Multiverse losses mount
However, despite impressive fundraising and revenue growth, Multiverse posted a net loss for the sixth year in a row. The annual net loss for the company in 2022 was £14.2m, up from £10.9m in 2021.
Last year’s funding should grant Multiverse a significant amount of runway, despite widening losses. However, there is a growing atmosphere in tech of deprioritising growth in favour of an efficient path to profitability.
Oliver Prill, CEO of digital banking service Tide, told UKTN: “There was an emphasis on big money investments and rapid growth for tech startups in the years just prior to 2022, the macroeconomic conditions have unsurprisingly cooled off big spending from many investors, and the increased interest rate might have driven that even further.”
Speaking to Sifted in October, Blair said: We’ve come from a market that rewards pure growth but ultimately it doesn’t build long-term business — the market correction that we’re seeing is forcing companies to focus on what would work in the real world.”
A spokesperson for Multiverse told UKTN: “We have made significant investments across all teams at Multiverse to set ourselves up for greater scale in the year ahead.
“We’re focusing our efforts on supporting a rapidly growing number of apprentices, raising awareness, and building an outstanding alternative to university through apprenticeships.”
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