Barcelona, March 4, 2025 – The Spanish government’s Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Function, Óscar López, announced on Tuesday that the government will become a shareholder of San Sebastian-based Multiverse Computing with a co-investment of 67 million euros.
Multiverse Computing has developed software inspired by quantum computing that allows AI models to be compressed to 10 percent of the original size, consuming fewer resources and obtaining equivalent returns, according to the company. This allows, for example, use of these models while consuming less energy or on smaller devices, such as virtual reality glasses or smartphones instead of large computers, even in offline mode.
The investment will be carried out through the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT).
“With this operation, we seek to position Spain as a benchmark in energy-efficient AI language models, scaling the development of compaction tools that compress language models by up to 90%, reducing costs and energy consumption while increasing the technological independence of Spain and Europe,” said the minister at a press conference in the Spanish Pavilion at MWC Barcelona 2025.
In 2024, DIGITALEUROPE, the employers’ association of industries undergoing digital transformation in Europe, recognized Multiverse Computing as the next future European unicorn. In the same year, LinkedIn incorporated Multiverse Computing into its top 20 most promising startups in Spain. The Basque company has one of the most powerful AI editing software tools on the market.
The minister also announced new grants aimed at helping companies incorporate AI into their value chains. Firstly, a new call for 130 million euros from ERDF funds. The grants, of up to 5 million euros per project, will be articulated through the Red.es entity and “will allow our companies to launch experimental development projects in which intensive use will be made of technologies associated with AI, such as machine learning and deep learning, generative AI or LLMs, among others.”
In addition, López announced another call for 50 million euros for the integration of AI in companies in the health sector; both, added to the call to promote the use of AI and data in Spanish SMEs, closed a few days ago and which has a budget of 24 million euros, “are more than 200 million euros of European funds–ERDF and RTRP–that will be activated in the coming days and that will allow us to continue exploiting our strengths in the field of Artificial Intelligence,” said the minister.
López made these announcements at MWC Barcelona 2025 during his speech at the event “CambIA: from research to business,” in which some of the results of the “R+D Missions in AI” programme were announced. This initiative, endowed with 50 million euros from the RTRP and launched by the Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence (SEDIA) in 2021, concluded last December and has developed real use cases for the application of AI in strategic sectors of the country’s economy.
During the event, moderated by the journalist Emilio Doménech and closed by the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, María González Veracruz, three of the most representative projects of this program were presented.
One of them is TartaglIA, focused on the health sector and endowed with 7 million euros, which has developed the UTILE platform so that health institutions can share data securely through a federated training system, where sensitive patient data does not leave the hospitals that guard them. Among the specific initiatives they have launched are a system that allows cognitive impairment to be detected in patients’ voices that would indicate an increased risk of Alzheimer’s, or a model that studies ultrasound scans and allows primary care doctors to interpret them, thus offering better care to their patients.
AgrarIA was also presented, with an investment of 9 million euros and aimed at the agricultural sector. This consortium of 24 partners has created a platform where the entire value chain of the sector can implement AI use cases, such as forecasting crop yields using satellite images (which allows, for example, anticipating the use of bottles or trucks that companies will need), early detection of pests in tomatoes with drones or modelling the energy expenditure of large cold rooms using digital twins, an application that allows savings in inefficient electricity consumption of up to 40%.
Finally, the results of the IA4TES project, to which 12 million euros have been allocated, and which has focused on the sustainable energy transition through Artificial Intelligence, have been presented. Led by Iberdrola together with 8 other companies, this project has developed more than 60 use cases, including the detection of birds using AI to stop the blades of wind turbines before they hit them, thus protecting wildlife while generating clean energy.
“We are talking about initiatives that bring tremendous added value to the health, agriculture and energy sectors,” the minister emphasized. “TartaglIA, AgrarIA and IA4TES are tangible proof that AI can be competitive, responsible and useful for people; they represent three success stories of public investment in research and technology transfer.”
