Global lessons from a Spanish start-up

In July, the Spanish AI/quantum firm Multiverse Computing became a European unicorn. It announced it had almost closed its €500m funding round, which would value it at around €2bn post-money.

When I joined as its senior adviser in April 2022, the firm had only 30 employees and two locations: its headquarters in San Sebastian and an office in Toronto, Canada, whose first client was the Bank of Canada.

With more than 400 staff representing over 45 nationalities and operations in more than ten locations, including San Francisco and Qatar, what lessons can start-ups glean from the firm’s trajectory?