What will training and ‘upskilling’ look like in the future? That’s the puck that Multiverse, the UK-based startup, has been trying to skate to for a number of years. The arrival of Generative AI both as a tool and a skill that must be mastered by the modern worker has made that mission ever more urgent.
Last week, Multiverse acquired Berlin-based data and AI training provider StackFuel, a small startup that had raised only €1.5m in total, from a handful of seed investors.
Multiverse now plans to use that acquisition as a wedge into the German market, and subsequently other European markets.
In a wide-ranging conversation on this week’s podcast (available on YouTube and Spotify), I asked Founder and CEO Euan Blair what his next strategic moves would be, and why the US didn’t work out as a potential market for Multiverse's expansion a couple of years ago.
The deal brings StackFuel’s local market expertise and enterprise customer base, including Mercedes-Benz, IAV, and Telefónica, into Multiverse’s expanding European operations.
StackFuel was founded by Leo Marose and Stefan Berntheisel, both of whom will now join the senior Multiverse leadership team. The company has previously reported a 92% programme completion rate for its courses, which is pretty impressive.
The acquisition comes amid a period of consolidation in European edtech, following a €500m round that pushed Brevo to unicorn status.
Against that backdrop, Multiverse is doubling down on workforce upskilling as governments and corporates desperately try to turn their investment in AI into productivity gains.
London-based Multiverse has so far raised more than $400m from investors including Index Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and General Catalyst, reaching a $1.7bn valuation in 2022 after a $220m funding round.
However, the company has also faced financial pressures. Accounts filed at Companies House last year showed Multiverse had recorded a pre-tax loss of £63.3m for the year ending March 2025, up £2.6m year-on-year, despite revenues rising more than a third to just under £80m. The filings also show the company made 55 redundancies over the same period.
Blair told me the StackFuel deal works well for the company because Germany has a stated aim to become an “AI nation.”
“Germany is Europe's largest economy, yet one of its least digitally transformed. They've got an incredibly skilled workforce up to a point, but digital skills are something the government is really trying to encourage… For us to kind of get a foothold in the German market, take our AI platform and curriculum to ramp up in Germany was incredibly exciting,” he said.
“If you look at the German government, as part of the coalition agreement, it said that it wanted to become an AI nation. It will only do that by skilling huge volumes of people on the job, and that's where we want to help,” he added.
Multiverse has been operating in Germany since 2025 and holds AZAV accreditation for its courses, but this new acquisition will no doubt be viewed as having the potential to boost Multiverse’s much-needed growth.