London- and NY-based Multiverse, which finds diverse candidates to fill apprenticeships, raises a $220M Series D, following a $130M Series C in September 2021
We've been tracking a worrying trend of layoffs in the technology industry, but that is not the full story.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is Multiverse's third round in roughly eighteen months — a $44M Series B led by General Catalyst in January 2021, then a $130M Series C that September, and now a $220M Series D — an acceleration arriving just as TechCrunch's own coverage frames it against a wave of technology-industry layoffs. The pitch is counter-cyclical: instead of competing for scarce credentialed engineers, Multiverse builds apprenticeship pipelines that place diverse, non-degree candidates directly into employer roles.
First-order effects
- Multiverse gains a war chest sized to scale placements across its London and New York operations at precisely the moment budget-cutting tech employers are rethinking expensive degree-gated hiring channels.
- Employers using the platform get a larger vetted pool of apprenticeship candidates, while laid-off and non-traditional workers gain a route into tech roles that bypasses the credential filter.
Second-order effects
- Adjacent talent-marketplace players feel the squeeze: Turing raised an $87M Series D at a $1.1B valuation months earlier for AI-sourced remote engineers, and both are now bidding for the same corporate spend on alternative talent sourcing rather than traditional recruiters' fees.
- Universities and conventional staffing agencies face a funded competitor whose product explicitly substitutes for the degree-to-hire pathway they monetize.
Third-order effects
- If venture-scale capital keeps flowing into apprenticeship infrastructure through downturns, credential-based recruiting loses its default status and workforce pipelines consolidate around platform intermediaries — a trajectory Multiverse itself followed by later pushing into AI training via its StackFuel acquisition and a $70M raise at a $2.1B valuation.
The trend: Workforce platforms that replace degrees with structured apprenticeships are drawing progressively larger venture rounds even as tech layoffs shrink conventional hiring.