Quantum software startup Multiverse Computing has tripled its valuation to €100m after raising €25m in a funding round led by Spanish VC Columbus Venture Partners. The company plans to use the investment to develop new applications for large language models (LLMs) and expand internationally.
Multiverse’s CEO and cofounder Enrique Lizaso said the huge volumes of cash being pumped into AI since last autumn are having a spillover effect into the interest in quantum software. The startup has been working on quantum-inspired computing techniques since its founding in 2019, which could potentially address some pressing problems the industry faces today with AI models.
One of those problems is copyright. Multiverse plans to launch a new product called “Lobotomizer” that uses quantum tensor networks to allow AI companies to erase knowledge contained in LLMs without having to retrain them completely. This could be very attractive to AI companies that are trying to argue they’re not breaching copyright.
Another problem in AI that Multiverse is focusing on is the immense power needed to run LLMs. The costs of training these algorithms is rising exponentially as developers feed them with increasing amounts of data to make them more powerful. A share of the new funding will go towards refining CompactifAI, a product launched in November 2023 that attempts to substantially cut the memory and storage space that an LLM requires.
Lizaso said CompactifAI can compress a model by 85% or more without losing accuracy, halving its costs which are mostly linked to its energy requirements. The product has already been shown to make Meta’s LLaMA models more efficient and can allow an LLM to run on a small device such as a smartwatch, rather than needing cloud access.
If CompactifAI becomes a success, it could change the company completely, Lizaso said. He and his cofounders have already discussed the possibility of creating a spin-off around it, as the potential customer base is very distinct from its original product Singularity and appeals to a different set of investors.
As Multiverse weighs up how to position its new AI-focused tools, it’s also expanding its existing product into new sectors. Singularity, which has been used by customers including BBVA, Bankia the European Tax Agency and the Bank of Canada, is also being used in the energy industry where the quantum software can help optimise electric grid supply and demand.
With the funding from this round, Lizaso hopes to increase Singularity’s customer base in energy and other industries including defence, cybersecurity and manufacturing. Multiverse also wants to break into life sciences, where the product can be used to sequence proteins, and spacetech, where it’s adapting its algorithms to run onboard satellites.
Lizaso said the company’s performance in the second half of last year “was tremendous” with revenue doubling compared to 2022. As of the end of that year, it was one of Spain’s fastest-growing startups outside the country’s main hubs of Madrid and Barcelona.
Part of the funding from this Series A round will fuel the startup’s expansion to the US, where Lizaso is already assessing sites in San Francisco, Texas and Boston. The company has offices in Munich, Paris, London and Toronto — from where it is already supplying the US market — in addition to its San Sebastián headquarters.
He plans to hire 50 employees this year to add to his 150-strong team and expects the company’s number of patents to grow from 93 to 150 by the end of 2024.
In a world where AI is becoming increasingly powerful, Multiverse Computing is using quantum-inspired techniques to tackle some of the industry’s biggest challenges. With its latest funding round, the startup is poised to make a significant impact in the AI sector and beyond.
Source: Multiverse
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