Multiverse, an apprenticeship business offering an alternative to the university career path, has announced its first acquisition of Eduflow, a Copenhagen-based startup that has built a platform to manage social learning. With the acquisition of Eduflow, Multiverse wants to extend its reach to 100,000 apprentices and ultimately become a replacement for the traditional university system.
Founded in 2016 by Euan Blair, son of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Multiverse offers young people access to education and apprenticeship opportunities beyond university. The platform trains thousands of apprentices in areas such as data analytics and software engineering, and its proprietary tech platforms exist to ensure apprentices have access to a high-quality, personalized, applied learning experience.
Speaking about the development, Founder and CEO of Multiverse, Euan Blair, said:
Tech is the key to scaling our offering: dramatically increasing the number of apprentices we can reach from every background and building an alternative to university that is sustainable and accessible, and available at any point in your career. Tech has always been a core part of how we deliver, but as we expand our platform, it’s integral to this next phase. This investment will accelerate our use of tech to drive results. Ujjwal is a remarkable leader who has driven change at the world’s largest tech companies.
Eduflow believes that digital tools for learning need to be more than just a playlist of videos. It is building learning activities that instructors can use to engage learners and make them active participants in their learning process.
Chief Executive Officer of Eduflow added:
When it comes to learning the skills needed to navigate the workplace, it’s clear that the future of learning isn’t lectures and textbooks; it’s delivered through the transformational power of working and learning combined. By integrating Eduflow’s technology and team into Multiverse’s existing stack, apprentices will benefit from more specialization to ensure their skills are directly applicable to their careers and a greater level of peer learning to help build the connections, communication skills and teamwork necessary to thrive.
As a part of the agreement, Multiverse has announced the appointment of former Meta executive Ujjwal Singh as chief product and technology officer.
Ujjwal Singh, who was previously head of the workplace at Meta, director of engineering at Google, and CTO at GoFundMe, commented:
Even after studying, my best lessons came from the workplace, not the classroom. That’s why I was so driven by the mission of Multiverse and the opportunity to build the future of Applied Learning.
The latest deal marks the most significant single investment in technology from Multiverse, which became the UK’s first EdTech unicorn in June 2022 after a £176 million funding round brought its valuation over the $1 billion mark.