The Multiverse blog

RSK has launched a strategic partnership with upskilling platform Multiverse to train an initial cohort of 33 employees in advanced AI applications. The partnership is designed to support RSK’s ongoing emphasis on innovation and technological advancement.

With more than 200 businesses, RSK Group will benefit from AI fluency across core functions and divisional teams. By empowering staff to embed advanced AI capability to support their work, teams can shift their focus to the strategic, high-value work that drives revenue.

Gary Eimerman, Chief Learning Officer at Multiverse, said: "We’re proud to partner with RSK, turning AI literacy into a shared language across its businesses. This mastery of AI will serve as a force multiplier, allowing teams to unlock hidden efficiencies and scale their impact. Together, we’re building a future-proof foundation that supports RSK as the group continues to find solutions to complex environmental challenges."

Dr. Ian Goodacre, Group Divisional and Board Director at RSK, said: “At RSK, our strength lies in our vast, multi-disciplinary expertise. This partnership with Multiverse is about empowering our people to harness that collective intelligence. AI support will allow our teams to focus on the high-value, creative problem-solving that helps us achieve efficiencies, stay competitive and continue to deliver outstanding results for our clients."

The 33 learners are enrolled across three programmes with Multiverse’s AI portfolio:

• AI Strategy and Leadership, Level 5: Designed for leaders to align AI initiatives with specific business areas and broader strategic goals.
• AI for Business Value, Level 4: Empowers teams to identify and implement tailored AI solutions that drive measurable business impact, focusing on process optimisation.
• AI-Powered Productivity, Level 3: Boosts team productivity by integrating GenAI tools into daily tasks to automate repetitive workflows and drive measurable efficiencies.

This partnership is part of an important step in RSK’s digital transformation. In fostering a culture of mastery and technological confidence, RSK is positioning its team to navigate the accelerating pace of the global working world and solve complex client problems with innovative, bold solutions.

AI is here. But who benefits?

The answer is supposed to be “everyone.”

The evidence of the past 18 months tells a different story — one of accelerating divergence between the workers and organisations that can productively use AI, and those that cannot. At large, AI can replace the workers who use it, or it can amplify them. The same software, with the same access, can lead to vastly different outcomes.

The gap has a name. It is the adoption layer.

The three layers

There are three layers to the AI stack today, each with a different make up, and different winners.

The first is the foundation layer of frontier labs that capture the headlines, the geopolitics, and the unprecedented revenue growth.

The second is the application layer: products built on top of models to solve specific problems like customer service agents, legal research tools, design assistants, and AI tutors. The winners here are those who can identify and scale the most high-value use cases for AI to augment or replace the existing ways of doing things.

The third is the adoption layer: the human, organisational, and institutional capability to actually use any of this in a way that changes real world outcomes.

For too long the adoption layer has been treated as an afterthought, but it’s by far the most exciting and urgent challenge facing technology today.

The productivity gap between the most and least AI-fluent workers using the same tools is already 6x by some measures, and growing. For corporates, it is the difference between AI as a cost centre and AI as a productivity lever.

At a societal level, particularly in the polarised, low-growth democracies of the West, successful adoption is the difference between technology that lifts workers, elevating their roles, and technology that simply happens to them. Without broad distribution, the benefits accumulate to those already best placed.

This is the part of the AI stack that has been most neglected. It is also the layer where Britain and Europe have particular institutional advantages: highly educated workforces, strong absorptive capacity, mature systems of employer-led training, and public services that can act as natural laboratories for applied AI. The bones of an adoption infrastructure exist. The question is whether we grasp the opportunity in front of us.

The deployment problem

If you doubt that adoption is the binding constraint, the clearest evidence is what the AI labs themselves are now doing.

In the past few weeks, two leading frontier labs have raised multi-billion dollar professional services ventures, backed by some of Wall Street’s largest investors. Job ads for Forward Deployed Engineers — essentially a hybrid between consultants and software engineers — are through the roof.

It is a striking concession. For years, the pitch was that AI would automate away the cost of professional services. The labs are now standing up the largest professional services build of the decade not to replace consultants, but to do the work themselves.

The reason isn’t mysterious. Most organisations are not the clean-edged enterprise of the demo video. When it turns out most of your customer interactions fall into the category of edge cases, getting AI to deliver inside that reality requires more human labour, not less.

These services arms might reach the very largest enterprises, the Fortune 500, and the portfolio companies of the biggest private equity funds. But it is not a workforce-scale answer across a continent as diverse and complex as Europe, where 5.5 million UK businesses and roughly 25 million EU SMEs sit far below the labs’ line of sight. And even at the largest enterprises in the world: deployment does not equal adoption.

So what will actually work?

Some people have claimed that the key to AI adoption is simply trial and error, something that anyone can do on their own. This myth of self-teaching is easy to debunk. The issue is not so much using the tools as it is finding the right thing to apply them to; that requires support. And the idea that generic AI courses or YouTube videos explaining the technology will provide any meaningful gains to the adoption of the technology for workers doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. After all, trying to deliver outcomes with AI in the workplace often exposes the profound gap between what the technology can do in theory, and what is deemed permissible on the job by legal, IT, and HR departments in practice.

Multiverse has three principles for teaching; well-supported by the underlying learning science and our experience in delivering on the job learning to tens of thousands of workers, across nearly every sector and industry.

The first is that AI fluency is not primarily a technical skill. Looking at the difference between AI ‘power users’ and the rest, our learning scientists found that the determining factors are largely human: analytical reasoning to break a problem down, creativity to push beyond the obvious prompt, systems thinking to anticipate how the model will respond, scepticism and detail-orientation to catch its mistakes. Prompt-engineering is one of the smallest things that separates the most effective users from the least.

The second principle is that adults learn complex skills through application. Real work, in real contexts, with feedback from experts who have done the work themselves. They learn by trying, failing on small things, having someone more experienced explain why, and trying again. There is no shortcut around this loop. There is no ‘AI in 30 days’ course, no matter how slickly produced, that can compress it.

The third principle is that context really matters; and context is probably the defining word of the AI-era thus far. What a financial analyst at a global bank, a nurse working for an NHS Trust, or an operations manager at a fast growing startup can do with AI in their roles differs wildly. So you can’t sheep dip your way to progress here. You need a detailed understanding of an organisation’s goals and constraints, a clear understanding of function, team, and job specific priorities, and a thorough grasp of individual worker capability and experience. The context gap is one of the key reasons why even as expertise becomes commoditised by AI, humans still have a vital role to play in delivering work.

These three principles point to the same operational answer: learning embedded inside the job, guided by experts, with the learning coming from the weeks a worker spends tackling a real problem in their own organisation, developing the necessary skills in the process, and building organisational capability that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

This is, in essence, the apprenticeship model — older than AI, older than computing, and one of the things Britain, Germany, and the European continent, our core markets, have more institutional memory of than almost any other part of the world.

The output isn’t a certificate. It’s a measurable change in how a team operates.

Where we go from here

Most of this is obvious. Nearly every business leader is frustrated that their organisation isn’t adopting AI faster, and they’re well aware that the solution will never come from top down mandates.

It comes from the analyst who notices that three hours of every Tuesday is spent reconciling the same two reports. From the case officer who realises the bottleneck in their service is one repetitive judgement call.

There are many examples of how adoption is working in practice already. A service and selling coach at a national retailer built a ‘Distillation Bot’ that compresses hours of supplier training video into bite-sized micro-learning, cutting prep time by 87.5% and lifting partner quiz scores by 25%. An NHS consultant in paediatric intensive care designed an automated shift-safety alerting system that flags senior staffing gaps fourteen days in advance, swapping costly last-minute agency cover for planned cover. An aerospace ops officer built a stock-tracking dashboard for Aircraft-on-Ground events that, beyond eight hours saved a month, surfaces compliance risks worth up to $1m a year in penalties. A placements officer at a university built a structured job-title report for students choosing between placements, cutting analysis time from twenty minutes to three.

This is a quiet revolution happening right now. All of these individuals built things that matter to their organisations because someone trusted them to learn, and gave them the tools to apply that learning on the job. All of those individuals are frontline workers.

Multiply that by every council, every hospital, every factory, every back office, every team. That is the value of the adoption layer. It is also the surest way to tip the scales in favour of human agency, and away from the real risk of many workers being automated out of existence.

The civilisational bet

Because beneath all this is the biggest question: whether AI ultimately replaces the workers who use it, or whether it amplifies them.

Too often the default running through most of the AI conversation, particularly from big tech, is the former. Multiverse is one of the very few companies in this market whose explicit mission is the latter.

So far, the story of AI has been one of humans training machines to make machines smarter. We are working towards the inverse: using a blend of machines and our coaches to train humans to make humanity smarter, and to keep human judgement, creativity, and agency in the loop, even as the technology itself becomes more powerful.

Which outcome we get depends almost entirely on what we choose to invest in, and what we choose to prioritise.

This is, ultimately, why we built Multiverse the way we did. The next decade of AI will not just be won by those who built the underlying technology, but by those who built the workforce capability, and the institutions, to benefit from it.

LONDON – 15th May, 2026 – Multiverse, the upskilling platform for AI and tech adoption, today announced it has raised $70 million in primary funding to drive growth across Europe. The funding was led by Schroders Capital, with participation from existing investors including General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, D1 Capital Partners, Index Ventures, Bond, and StepStone Group. 

The investment will accelerate Multiverse's expansion across Europe, with the goal of ensuring that AI benefits the workforce, rather than displacing it. It lands amid accelerating company growth driven by UK enterprise adoption, and strategic acquisitions. Multiverse completed the acquisition of Berlin-based data and AI training company StackFuel in January 2026. 

The $2.1bn valuation, a $400m increase on the last funding round, reflects a company in its strongest position yet: revenue grew 50% yoy, and increased at an accelerating rate for the third consecutive year. For the first time, Multiverse had a cash-positive quarter from January to March 2026. Alongside this raise, all employees regardless of seniority have been offered equity and a long term stake in the company as a result of the funding round.

Defining a new category: the AI adoption layer 

Businesses and governments across the UK and Europe are investing heavily in artificial intelligence, with AI spend doubling since last year according to BCG’s 2026 AI Radar. Yet the much promised productivity gains remain elusive. The missing ingredient is not more technology tools, it is a skilled workforce capable of deploying them. Corporate AI trailblazers in the BCG report invest twice as much in upskilling their workforce as AI followers. 

Multiverse was built to ensure workers don’t get left behind by the rapid pace of technology. Today that means closing the gap between workers and tech, in effect acting as the AI adoption layer of the technology stack. Its platform diagnoses precise skills gaps, matching corporate goals against workforce capability to give leaders a holistic view and detailed recommendations for upskilling. Multiverse then equips workers at every level with the AI, data and digital skills to translate technology investment into measurable outcomes. To date, the company delivered more than £2 billion in verified ROI for over 1,000 employers, including critical national security with Babcock and household names like The AA, Capita and Addison Lee.

With 50% revenue growth last year, driven by new customers and continued demand from existing customers the strategic investment is intended to fuel further expansion. The last year has seen an increasing focus on strategic alliances, with tech platforms including Microsoft, Palantir, and Databricks partnering with Multiverse. Atlas, its AI coaching platform, tripled daily active users in the last year.   

"There are companies who desperately need the benefits AI can bring. There are AI companies. What has been missing is the layer that bridges the two," said Euan Blair, CEO and Founder of Multiverse. "This investment marks the moment Multiverse defines that category, and takes it across Europe. Getting outcomes from AI and unlocking productivity is not just a technology problem. It is a people problem. We exist to solve it."

Multiverse's thesis, that AI's greatest value lies in expanding human capability, not replacing it, is drawn from extensive employer experience. CEOs surveyed by Multiverse cited skills gaps as the second biggest barrier to AI adoption, ahead of regulation and data quality.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “We want Britain to achieve the fastest rate of AI adoption of any country in the G7 - the productivity dividend we can get from AI will grow businesses of all shapes and sizes in the UK and ensure they stay competitive.”

“Multiverse is a fantastic example of a British company helping turn that ambition into reality. This investment will support its expansion across Europe, strengthening a UK firm that is competing globally and equipping people with the skills to make AI work in practice.”

Michael Mclean, Head of Private Equity Technology Investments, Schroders Capital, said: “The evolution of AI is creating transformative opportunities to drive productivity and growth across global economies,” “Multiverse is a leader in enabling this shift, helping organisations capitalise on these tailwinds. With growing momentum across Europe, Multiverse puts the focus on AI adoption, enabling employers to upskill their workforces and translate technology investment into tangible outcomes.

"High-quality businesses with the potential for transformative, sustainable growth and value creation are key fundamentals we look for. We're therefore delighted to have led this significant fundraise as Multiverse further accelerates its growth journey."

Growth has been driven in large part by deepening business with existing customers. 

Louise Benford, Chief People Officer at The AA, said: “Our work with Multiverse has supported The AA's AI transformation, bridging the gap between new technology and the talent needed to harness it. Multiverse has enabled skills development in areas such as data and AI, and we have seen positive engagement from colleagues participating in the programmes.”

Lynsey Valentine, Strategy Director at Babcock, said: “Multiverse has helped us tackle a growing complexity and volume of data by equipping our people with practical, real‑world data skills. Our teams are already applying what they’ve learned to automate processes, unlock insight, and drive meaningful improvements well before graduation.”

Lisa Pinfield, Group Director of Performance & Development at Capita, said: “At Capita, we chose Multiverse because they enabled us to build critical AI and data capability at scale, in a way that is practical, inclusive and closely aligned to real business needs. The partnership has helped us turn AI ambition into real impact, equipping colleagues with future‑critical skills while strengthening performance and decision‑making across the organisation.”

Patrick Gallagher, CEO at Addison Lee, said: "We are delighted with the impact of our partnership with Multiverse, which plays a vital role in Addison Lee’s ongoing digital transformation. It has been incredibly rewarding to see our colleagues at every level of the business respond with such resounding positivity toward this opportunity to learn and progress. As we navigate an increasingly complex and rapidly changing landscape, this collaboration ensures our workforce remains equipped with the essential skills to drive our business forward."

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The world of work is undergoing the most profound transformation in living memory. AI has supercharged the relentless advance of tech, software and systems, and has fundamentally changed what employers need from their teams. It has also supercharged how quickly both employers and employees need to evolve.

From Claude to CoPilot, the tools reshaping organisations are proliferating faster than traditional education and skills programmes can keep up with. Knowledge transfer is no longer the primary goal to aim for, because learning without impact no longer cuts it.

What today's employers need is people who can apply new data and AI skills to real challenges and drive measurable results. The way apprenticeship ROI is measured must take this into account.

That's why Multiverse's results-based training model focuses on more than whether learners finish the programme. That still matters, but we also emphasise the value they have created thanks to their training, for themselves and for their employers. And we celebrate their success against this more complete, deeper definition of achievement.

The modern era of upskilling demands modern measures of success

UK productivity has been stagnant for a decade. And yet, not only does the technology to reverse this trend already exist in the shape of AI-driven automation, data analytics and intelligent workflows, it is also now within reach of organisations of every size and in every sector.

But for these technologies to deliver the productivity gains the economy so badly needs, we need to build a critical mass of people with the right skills.

Training providers must teach more than theory and deliver more than simply qualifications. They must equip learners to apply new capabilities directly to their work — and quickly; from day one, not after 18 months of learning — and they must measure whether those capabilities are making an impact.

This is the standard of quality Multiverse holds itself to, and we're building the human and technological infrastructure to deliver this at scale.

Measuring what matters most

AI and modern data systems make it possible to connect learning directly to concrete business results. Multiverse's measurement approach embraces this new level of transparency, allowing the organisations we partner with to assess the ROI of apprenticeships against an accurate before-and-after picture of meaningful business outcomes.

The success of this approach is reflected in the results Multiverse tracks across its customer base:

• $2bn+ in confirmed ROI delivered to customers to date
• Approximately one working month per year saved per learner through productivity gains
• 45% of learners receive a promotion during or within 12 months of their programme
• 100%+ net revenue retention — customers consistently invest more with Multiverse after their first programme
• 98.4% pass rate among programme completers
• 97% learner satisfaction with coaching

What that impact looks like in practice

Behind each of these data points are individuals from our all-time cohort of 30,000+ learners who have used their new skills to solve real and urgent problems for their companies.

Across our customer base of more than 1,500 customers — including over a quarter of the FTSE 100, half of Russell Group universities, more than 100 NHS trusts and 50+ local councils — the pattern is consistent: learners acquire new skills, apply them to current workplace challenges and deliver results their employer can tangibly measure. Examples include:

Retail

A product manager at a national food and clothing retailer built an automated pipeline to report on available merchandise space, and turned a two-hour manual process into a 60-second cycle. The time saved allows for decisions to be made daily, based on actionable insights, instead of occasionally and based on guesswork.

Banking

A project manager built a GenAI workflow to automatically generate and distribute new bank account numbers, compressing processing time from 25 hours per 1,000 accounts to under 15 minutes, while virtually eliminating manual errors.

Healthcare

A service manager on the long-term conditions team used Copilot to analyse patient feedback following a continence product change, producing reports that enabled direct cost savings to be negotiated with the supplier.

Aerospace

An operations officer developed a compliance tracking dashboard for critical aircraft parts, saving eight hours a month and identifying potential compliance risks worth up to $1m a year in avoided penalties.

We're investing in traditional metrics — and always thinking about what comes next

In this era of rapid technological change, the ability to apply learning quickly and effectively is more important than ever. Metrics like course completion do matter, but they only measure whether a learner gets to a finish line. Taken alone, they offer an incomplete picture of the value a training programme delivers along the way.

That's why we are continually investing in improving our performance against traditional metrics, while also pushing the frontiers of what outcome-focused training can achieve.

The standard we hold ourselves to is straightforward: are our learners better equipped to drive value in their organisations because of their time working with Multiverse? And the evidence shows, consistently, that they are.

Read our latest Impact Report to discover how Multiverse is transforming the way people learn and work, and helping thousands of workers unleash AI's potential. Or get in touch to learn more about how Multiverse can support your workforce.

Staffordshire Police is teaming up with AI upskilling platform Multiverse to pilot a new apprenticeship scheme designed to upskill staff on AI. A total of 15 team members from across the organisation will learn how to use AI to enhance their processes and increase efficiency.

Individuals in the cohort were selected to participate based on the nature of their current role and responsibilities in force. The pilot is aimed at developing their understanding of the technology and harnessing data to strengthen existing ways of working.

John Bowler, Director of Digital, Data and Technology at Staffordshire Police, said: “From creating simple AI tools to support everyday tasks such as drafting and responding to emails, to helping teams deliver complex processes more effectively, this will be another practical tool in the toolbox for our people – both now and moving forward.

“By developing these skills in a safe and structured way, we can share knowledge and build confidence across the force, strengthening our data and digital capability and helping to build a workforce that is ready for the future.”

Rebecca Crellin, Apprentice Manager at Staffordshire Police, said: “This is an incredible opportunity for those involved in the trial to develop their skills and learn how best to use AI effectively. We had significant interest in the trial and hope that once this latest cohort completes their qualifications, there may be scope for further opportunities in the future.”

Katie Russell, Head of Learning and Organisational Development at Staffordshire Police, added: “This is an exciting opportunity for us as an organisation to further learn how best to harness AI to enhance efficiency and improve processes while developing our understanding of this ever-advancing technology.

“I am pleased we have been able to partner with Multiverse on this pilot and look forward to seeing the impact of the learning in the confidence of our learners and in improvements within our organisation.”

Gary Eimerman, Chief Learning Officer at Multiverse, said: “For public services like policing, the opportunity to use AI to automate administrative burdens and unlock deeper insights from data is transformative. By equipping these 15 pioneers with the ability to build and deploy AI tools responsibly, we are ensuring the force remains agile and effective in a digital-first world. We are proud to support the Staffordshire Police in leading the way for vocational, applied learning in this critical field.”

Multiverse is the upskilling platform for AI and tech adoption, which delivers personalised, on-the-job learning. Multiverse has trained more than 30,000 apprentices in AI, data and digital skills since 2016. 

Over 1,500 companies work with Multiverse to deliver a new kind of learning that’s transforming the workforce at scale. Programmes are targeted at people of any age or career stage.

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Europcar Mobility Group UK (Europcar), the global mobility player, is driving forward responsible digital and AI adoption through an AI Academy delivered by upskilling platform Multiverse. 

Europcar learners on the programme have already unlocked significant gains in productivity and innovation by embedding tools like Gemini into operational workflows. This has modernised reporting and enabled the team to map order processing more effectively.

Abigail Sly, Pricing Analyst at Europcar, is one individual who has seen benefits from the investment in training, harnessing AI to build a tool to validate rental vehicle details (SIPPs) used for customer reservations. This tool is projected to save 234 hours per year on a process that was previously completed manually. Another learner has improved the speed and accuracy of financial reporting through AI-driven analysis, helping the company to make informed decisions and ensuring customer needs are met effectively.

Discussing her experience with the Multiverse training programme, Abigail said: “Working with the Multiverse team through our AI Academy has been incredibly useful to build critical digital skills that we can apply across many different areas of our work. I’m already putting these skills to the test by improving our internal processes and can’t wait to see how our wider teams grow their digital know-how in other workstreams.” 

Mark Newberry, Transformation & Strategy Director (UK & Ireland) at Europcar added: “At Europcar, we’re committed to ensuring our customers get from A to B safely and efficiently. And we are determined to embrace future-focused technologies and harness AI capabilities that can be scaled across our business to help us fulfil this commitment. The partnership with Multiverse is playing a critical role in ensuring we can maximise the advantages of AI as effectively and efficiently as possible.”

The partnership has seen Europcar employees from the company’s administration, procurement, and operations teams enrolled on the training programme to help standardise AI use across the business and empower staff with the skills to streamline day-to-day tasks through AI. 

Gary Eimerman, Chief Learning Officer at Multiverse said: “"With over 75 years of experience in the motoring industry, Europcar is a business that understands the value of futureproofing employee skills to grow sustainably within a changing market. Our partnership marks the next step in this digital evolution. The time saved and processes transformed by these learners will ultimately be of direct benefit to Europcar's customers.”

Multiverse is the upskilling platform for AI and tech adoption, which delivers personalised, on-the-job learning. Multiverse has trained more than 340,000 apprentices in AI, data and digital skills since 2016.

Over 1,500 companies work with Multiverse to deliver a new kind of learning that’s transforming the workforce at scale. Programmes are targeted at people of any age or career stage

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Following successful pilot programmes that delivered measurable improvements across its operations, the University of Southampton is expanding its digital training initiative to a wider cohort of staff. The AI and Data apprenticeships programme with Multiverse has welcomed an additional 150 colleagues, marking the university’s largest cohort yet.

Initial participants were quick to apply their new skills and drive tangible business impact, with one learner mitigating room inspection failures through clearer data and the implementation of a new process tracker. Other learners made strides in reducing admin bottlenecks, with one significantly cutting down reporting time and another developing a Power BI dashboard which led to a major reduction in issues with student engagement monitoring.

Building on this success, the University has recently extended the programmes to a new cohort of staff, reflecting the demand for digital skills across the organisation and the value demonstrated by earlier cohorts in increasing accuracy and reducing the burden of manual activities.

Staff have enrolled into one of four Multiverse courses, including AI-centric programmes Level 3 AI-Powered Productivity and Level 4 AI for Business Value. These courses will improve confidence in ethical and effective AI tool adoption, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, helping teams to integrate these tools into tasks across their workflows.

The Level 3 Data & Insights for Business Decisions and Level 4 Data Fellowship programmes will improve data handling and automation in Excel, PowerBI and Tableau, and train staff in predictive and statistical modelling to tackle hands-on projects and handle real operational challenges effectively. 

Andrew Atherton, VP International and Engagement and Digital Strategy Sponsor at the University of Southampton, said: “Multiverse’s training programmes have shown what’s possible when staff are given the tools and confidence to apply digital thinking to their work. Having secured significant results already, we’re excited to equip even more of our people with robust skills in AI and data, helping us to deliver even better services for students and increase job satisfaction for employees.” 

Gary Eimerman, Chief Learning Officer at Multiverse said: “It’s fantastic to see the impact that Multiverse training has already had on the University of Southampton, whether it’s fewer room inspection failures or reduced reporting time. Expanding the training will give more staff the opportunity to innovate in their roles, creating a shared digital culture across the University.” 

Multiverse is the upskilling platform for AI and tech adoption, which delivers personalised, on-the-job learning. Multiverse has trained more than 20,000 apprentices in AI, data and digital skills since 2016.

Over 1,500 companies work with Multiverse to deliver a new kind of learning that’s transforming the workforce at scale. Programmes are targeted at people of any age or career stage.

Age UK, the leading charity for older people, is partnering with tech upskilling platform Multiverse to launch an AI and Data Academy. The initiative will equip 60 team members with critical digital skills, transforming how the Charity supports the millions of older people currently facing poverty and isolation.

As the UK’s ageing population continues to grow, the demand for Age UK’s services has never been higher. Nearly 2 million older people are currently living in poverty, often hidden from traditional support networks. This partnership moves beyond traditional charity operations, using technology as a force multiplier to reach more vulnerable people with its services.

The training initiative will empower the organisation to modernise their processes, secure data-led insights and adopt new technology. By strengthening digital skills across its teams, Age UK can reduce delays in live fundraising projects, identify future fundraising opportunities, and streamline critical tasks such as writing funding bids, which can take weeks of employee time to complete manually.

Donna Marshall, Chief People Officer at Age UK, said: “Our people are deeply committed to the meaningful work that they do, and this partnership with Multiverse is a significant investment in their growth and the future of the Charity. By launching this AI and Data Academy, we are empowering our team to work more effectively, so they’re able to focus on what truly matters.”

James Radford, Strategy and Transformation Director at Age UK, said: “To address the complex challenges of poverty and isolation in an ageing population, we must be as agile and data-informed as possible. That means developing data and AI capabilities across our teams to unlock insights that allow us to scale our impact and target our resources to reach more people that need our support. The Digital Academy is therefore a key part of our transformation strategy.”

Staff will be enrolled across five Multiverse training programmes, including the Level 3 programmes Data for Insights and Business Decisions and AI-Powered Productivity, which introduce learners to data and AI platforms, such as Microsoft Copilot and Power BI.

The Level 4 Data Fellowship delivers training in programming, data modelling and analysis skills, while the Level 4-6 Advanced Data Fellowship will deepen technical expertise in data storage, machine learning and data flow automation. 

Gary Eimerman, Chief Learning Officer at Multiverse said: “Charities like Age UK deliver critical support to those in need, and as the need for charity support grows, so do the demands on those delivering these services. To help meet these demands, Age UK is leading the way by removing digital barriers, streamlining processes and unlocking valuable time through data insights and responsible AI uses.”

Multiverse is the upskilling platform for AI and tech adoption, which delivers personalised, on-the-job learning. Multiverse has trained more than 20,000 apprentices in AI, data and digital skills since 2016.

Over 1,500 companies work with Multiverse to deliver a new kind of learning that’s transforming the workforce at scale. Programmes are targeted at people of any age or career stage.

Before Multiverse, what was the alternative for a 42-year-old whose role is being automated? An evening course? A YouTube tutorial? In too many cases, the answer was nothing at all.

I started Multiverse nearly ten years ago because I saw an acute problem: a huge gulf between the skills workers had and the skills the economy needed. Ten years on, that problem has got harder. Employer investment in training has fallen by nearly £10 billion in real terms. Hundreds of thousands of vacancies in the NHS, social work and teaching go unfilled. More than a quarter of all employer vacancies are skills-related. And now we face something genuinely existential: AI-driven displacement that will impact every worker, in every sector.

The OBR's March 2026 forecast shows a £90 billion swing in public borrowing depending on whether productivity improves - and names AI adoption as a key factor. UK output per person has flatlined since 2019. The cost of inaction is not abstract.

Last year, Multiverse accounted for more than half of all growth in apprenticeship starts across the entire system. That growth brings responsibility, and accountability where we fall short. So let me be direct about both.

On completion rates: ours are too low, and I want them higher. Our last published QAR (the government gathered metric for completion) sits at 52.6%. Our highest-level programmes complete at c.70%, our software developer programmes complete above 80%, and our data degree apprenticeship has topped the National Student Survey for satisfaction two years running. The gap elsewhere reflects deliberate choices that I stand behind, with caveats.

For our AI programmes, we chose an inclusive approach to enrolment. Employers asked us to reach frontline workers - the people who typically get passed over for formal training. The result is a 50/50 gender split on our two biggest AI programmes and genuine reach across the country. That approach comes with a real tradeoff on completion, but even among those who withdraw, 70% have already generated measurable value for their employer. One of our NHS apprentices reduced missed appointments in a hospital department by 30%. A pay rise or promotion during or after the programme is the majority outcome for our learners.

We also hit friction because the regulated apprenticeship system hadn't caught up with AI. The release of the first general purpose AI apprenticeship is now imminent; but nearly four years after ChatGPT launched. The right answer was never to simply ignore AI from an apprenticeship perspective - but we paid a price in our QARs for innovating ahead of the programmatic standards available. We're working to close that gap.

On whether we take more than we give: Multiverse has put $500 million of investment capital into the skills system — the largest non-governmental investment in the skills system anywhere in the world. Our learners have driven more than £2 billion in measurable ROI for their employers. Our AI coach, Atlas, now handles 15 million queries with a 98% satisfaction rate. Since 2020, we've contributed £102 million in Income Tax and National Insurance through our employee payroll alone.

And we train apprentices aged 16 to 70. That's not a mission drift — it's the most urgent expression of our mission. The cost of a Multiverse programme is a fraction of the cost of redundancy, rehiring, and starting again from scratch. Apprenticeships for a 45-year-old facing automation and apprenticeships for an 18-year-old who can't afford university are both responses to the same broken system. We shouldn’t pit them against each other; the country needs more of both.

On growing too fast: I accept that growth creates strain, and that in regulated markets innovation creates friction. We haven't always managed that strain as well as we should. We weren't prioritising formal careers advice for experienced workers, as an example - assuming they wouldn't want it from us. The regulator sees it differently, and we're now embedding it across all programmes. Where we've created friction, we'll own it and adapt.

But the apprenticeship system's core problem is not that providers have grown too fast. It's that the system hasn't grown at all. The NHS starts c.20,000 apprentices in a workforce of 1.4 million. Its own Long Term Workforce Plan targets 22% of clinical training through apprenticeship routes by 2031. It’s only 7% today. Funds available for apprenticeships expire unused every year. Total starts remain below pre-levy levels. We employ a sales team that is unashamedly relentless in trying to persuade every employer who will listen that educating their workforce is a good thing, and that it’s a worthwhile investment to make - both for them and for their workers.

In that context, growing too fast is not the right criticism. The right question is: why isn't everyone growing faster?

We are reinvesting everything we earn into building a reskilling infrastructure that didn't exist before. We are not going to stop. There is an alarming world where workers facing automation have nowhere to turn. They deserve a pathway, and we're proof that when you build one, people will take it. The skills gap is not inevitable. The question is whether we'll move fast enough, and boldly enough, to close it. And ten years on, there’s still a lot more for us to do.

— Euan Blair

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The firm is advancing its AI strategy with Multiverse to drive operational excellence across its business.

Leading business process outsourcer Capita is accelerating its adoption of artificial intelligence by expanding its partnership with Multiverse, the upskilling platform for AI and tech adoption. After successfully equipping more than 500 employees with advanced AI skills, Capita is now enrolling a further 250 staff members onto Multiverse programmes to embed AI-driven efficiency across the organisation.

To date, Capita’s initial cohort has saved an average of 10 hours per week per learner, delivering over 400 applied AI projects and identifying 40 unique AI use cases. These efficiency gains represent a significant shift toward a data and AI-augmented workforce, where technical skills are used to remove manual administrative burdens and accelerate decision making.

This expansion is central to Capita’s AI transformation strategy, building practical AI skills that improve delivery and reduce cost-of-service. By spreading AI capability across its departments, Capita is enabling its workforce to focus on high-value, strategic work.

Richard Holroyd, CEO of Capita Public Service, and the programme sponsor of the expanded training, said: "Our early work with Multiverse has demonstrated that when you give talented people the right skills, the impact is clear.

“We’re now building on that success as we broaden this training, showing through our own transformation how responsible, practical AI adoption can improve how we work, strengthen our delivery, and set a standard our clients can trust. By getting this right internally, we create a blueprint for the innovative, high‑quality solutions we take to market.”

Euan Blair, CEO and Founder of Multiverse, said: "Capita is showing exactly what it looks like to put AI to work, giving its teams the skills to actually use it every day. Seeing hundreds of people move from curiosity to delivering real results—like saving ten hours every week—proves that when you give a workforce the right training, they can solve even the most complex problems."

Dave Collingwood, a Training Operations Manager and Multiverse learner at Capita, joined the programme to discover how AI could be applied to his daily responsibilities. He identified a major bottleneck in the training team’s booking process and built a solution that reduced the time required for a single booking from eight minutes to just 30 seconds. This single project saved 30 business days of manual work each year and created a more auditable, data-rich system.

Dave is now applying these skills to Capita Fire and Rescue, where he is developing an AI agent to provide 100% assurance on the 6,000 fire risk assessments completed annually, eliminating potential inconsistencies and enhancing public safety.

Dave said: "I'll admit I started the programme unsure of where I’d actually be able to apply AI skills to my day-to-day work. But through the process, I realised just how many of my workflows were bogged down by manual steps that could be far more efficient with AI. Now, I’m confidently building agents that automate that manual work, not only saving my team significant time but also drastically reducing the room for human error."

Capita’s initial cohorts were enrolled on the AI for Business Value, Level 4, programme, which teaches professionals to identify and execute high-impact AI use cases that solve business problems. The next cohort will join the AI-Powered Productivity, Level 3, programme, focusing on the practical application of Generative AI tools like Microsoft Copilot to enhance daily workflows.

Through this continued collaboration, Capita is establishing a new benchmark for operational excellence by turning high-potential skills into impactful business results. By equipping its workforce to lead the AI revolution, Capita is ensuring that it remains at the forefront of industry innovation.