Purse strings tighten for Multiverse as losses widen

Apprenticeship training giant Multiverse has let more staff go as losses widened and cash balances nearly halved last year, according to its newly published accounts.

Multiverse, which was founded in 2016 by Tony Blair’s son Euan, announced a £2.6 million widening in its pre-tax losses in the year to March 31, 2025 to £63.3 million, even though its revenue jumped by over a third to almost £80 million.

The group also reported a 39 per cent drop in its cash balances from £135.4 million to £81.8 million. Leaders have however pressed that the company is “trending towards profitability”.

Accounts published yesterday show headcount fell by 1 per cent in 2025 from 822 to 813, which the company acknowledged but said it was rewarding its workforce more with a 16 per cent increase in staff costs. 

The firm paid out almost £980,000 to 55 employees in compensation for loss of office last year, a reduction from the nearly £2 million paid to 103 former staff in 2024.

Leaders said they have spent a significant amount of time scaling internal processes with AI, leading to fewer employed people.

Multiverse specialises in data and digital apprenticeships, mostly at higher education levels, and has degree awarding powers for its level 6 digital and technology solutions programme. 

The company recently took the title of England’s largest revenue-generating apprenticeship provider for the first time, overtaking Kaplan.

Multiverse recorded £58.9 million in revenue from apprenticeship training between April 2023 and March 2024, up from £44.1 million and fourth place the previous year.

Recent apprenticeship figures for the 2024-25 full year show Multiverse is also close to overtaking Lifetime Training as England’s biggest apprenticeship training provider in terms of apprentice volume.

Last year, it saw a 52 per cent jump in starts from 7,910 in 2023-24 to 12,030 in 2024-25. Meanwhile, Lifetime noted a 20 per cent fall in apprenticeship starts, from 16,330 in 2023-24 to 13,100 in 2024-25.

‘Strategy towards profitability’

Multiverse is yet to record a profit since launching a decade ago.

For the 2024-25 financial year, the company reported a negative £59.7 million earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) in 2025, an improvement on the negative £61.3 million EBITDA the year prior.

This was driven by cash nearly halving to £81.8 million last year but Blair stressed that its cash projections are “sufficient” to continue growing.

Revenue shot up by over a third to £79.6 million, which it attributed to its “accelerated market importance” in AI and data skills.

In a LinkedIn post last month, founder Euan Blair said he was setting “ambitious” targets for growth and had secured new partnerships with software providers such as Palantir, Microsoft and Databricks.

A Multiverse spokesperson said: “Companies are looking for ways to create genuine productivity improvements from their AI investments. We’re delivering that both for our growing customer base, and at Multiverse, where revenue per employee is up 37 per cent. Our revenue growth is accelerating, and our key earnings metric, EBITDA, has further improved as we deploy our strategy towards profitability.”

The spokesperson told FE Week it was not concerned with the drop in cash overall as it is “trending towards profitability” as noted in the accounts.