Multiverse Computing, a Spanish artificial intelligence startup, has released a free, compressed large language model (LLM) for developers. The company, now rumoured to be raising a €500 million funding round at a valuation exceeding €1.5 billion, positions its technology as a sovereign European alternative to dominant US models.
The new model, HyperNova 60B 2602, is available on the Hugging Face platform. It is an update to the company's existing HyperNova 60B, which Multiverse claims outperforms competitors like Mistral AI's Mistral Large 3. The core innovation is CompactifAI, a compression technology inspired by quantum computing principles.
Smaller Size, Competitive Performance
At 32GB, the HyperNova 60B model is roughly half the size of the OpenAI model it derives from, gpt-oss-120B. Despite this significant compression, Multiverse asserts its models maintain nearly equivalent potency and accuracy while offering lower memory usage and reduced latency. The latest version enhances capabilities in tool calling and agentic coding, areas where inference costs are typically high.
Enrique Lizaso, CEO and co-founder of Multiverse, stated in the release: "Our mission is to deliver sovereign solutions across the AI stack. By making powerful models more accessible and efficient, we empower enterprises globally without the typical cost and infrastructure barriers."
European Rivalry and Sovereign Ambition
The company draws direct parallels with French AI decacorn Mistral AI. Both have expanded internationally—Multiverse has offices in the US, Canada, and across Europe—and serve enterprise clients. Multiverse's named customers include energy giant Iberdrola, engineering firm Bosch, and the Bank of Canada.
This focus on "sovereign solutions" has geopolitical resonance, helping the company secure a collaboration with the regional government of Aragón in Spain. The Spanish Agency for Technological Transformation (SETT) was also an investor in Multiverse's $215 million Series B round last year.
Funding and Growth Trajectory
While not officially a unicorn, Multiverse is in active discussions with investors for a new funding round. The company confirmed the talks to TechCrunch but declined to comment on the reported €500 million target or a €1.5 billion valuation. It also did not confirm reports that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) reached €100 million in January.
If accurate, this ARR would be a fraction of OpenAI's reported $20 billion but approaches the scale of Mistral AI, whose ARR recently soared past $400 million. The startup, founded in the Basque region, has benefited from consistent local support and could become the region's first unicorn.
Looking ahead, Multiverse plans to open-source more of its compressed models in 2026 to support a wider array of use cases, furthering its challenge to the current AI market leaders.