Tony Blair’s son Euan is on his way to wealth of BILLIONS as Multiverse firm is valued at £1.35BN
Tony Blair’s son Euan, 38, is on his way to becoming a BILLIONAIRE as his Multiverse firm is valued at £1.35BN… 22 years after being arrested on boozy night out to celebrate his GCSEs
Euan Blair’s education start-up company Multiverse has had its valuation double to £1.35billion in 8 monthsThe son of former prime minister Tony Blair is well on his way to becoming a billionaire at the age of 38 When Euan was 16 in 2000 he made a public apology after being arrested for being drunk on GCSE night
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Tony Blair‘s son Euan has seen his tech firm’s valuation double in eight months to £1.35 billion after securing £175 million in funding for Multiverse.
The 38-year-old’s personal stake in the ‘EdTech’ company, which aims to get young people into apprenticeships, is believed to be worth around £380million.
It comes 22 years after his unfortunate brush with the law, when he was arrested as a teenager for being drunk after a night out in London celebrating his GCSE results.
The 16-year-old Euan Blair made a public apology in 2000, backed by his Prime Minister father, following the police reprimand.
The chief executive, who bought himself a £22million mansion last month, founded the business just six years ago and in the last eight months it has doubled its previous valuation of £700million.
The company works with more than 500 employers to get students from underrepresented backgrounds into professional services through apprenticeships.
Last week he was awarded an MBE for services to education in the Queen’s birthday honours list, six months after his father was awarded a controversial knighthood.
Euan Blair’s education company Multiverse is now valued at £1.35billion, with his own stake thought to be worth around £380million
in 2000, Euan Blair (pictured with his father Tony as a teenager in 1999) had to publicly apologise after he was arrested for being drunk and incapable in Leicester Square after celebrating his GCSE results
A petition to cancel the former Prime Minister’s knighthood over the Iraq War got 1million signatures in six days but despite this Tony Blair was made Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.
Aged 16, Euan was found by police ‘drunk and incapable’ and vomiting in Leicester Square after celebrating the completion of his GCSE exams a little too hard.
Having initially given a false name and address, telling officers he was called Euan John, was aged 18, and lived at his old home in Islington.
Only days earlier his father had been speaking out against hooligan behaviour, calling for police to be given powers to levy on-the-spot fines on drunken youths.
As a young boy, Euan was occasionally photographed outside the steps of Downing Street with his mother, father and siblings Nicholas and Kathryn (all pictured). His youngest brother, Leo, was born in 2000
After seeing the inside of a cell, he was released without charge and driven home by special branch officers.
Then Alastair Campbell read out a prepared statement of apology from Euan to the public. He said he was ‘very sorry for the inconvenience he caused to the police’.
Speaking after the funding was announced, Euan Blair, chief executive and founder of Multiverse, said: ‘There has never been a more pressing time to create an alternative to university education that is equitable and inclusive and there is an incredible opportunity before us to change the status quo with apprenticeships.
‘This funding will help us bring more people without degrees or in need of re-skilling into tech careers and ultimately create a more diverse group of future leaders.’
Previously Euan has suggested GCSEs should be scrapped because he thinks they are not a good indicator of future work performance and had failed to create a ‘fairer society’.
Tony Blair’s son Euan, pictured with wife Suzanne Ashman on their wedding day in 2013 in Wotton Underwood
The announcement comes just six months after Euan’s father Tony was given a knighthood
His remarks and business set him apart from his father, who called for seven in 10 young people to go to university – saying an increase from the current 53 per cent was key to the UK competing with ‘high-innovation economies’.
Euan said Tony had congratulated him on his new funding, speaking to the Evening Standard he said: ‘Of course he has – he’s hugely supportive of apprenticeships.’
Jeremy Duggan, president and board member at Multiverse, said: ‘The Multiverse journey so far has been characterised not only by rapid growth, but also by creating a real and actionable solution to the challenges of diversity in the workplace.’
Euan also said on LinkedIn, according to the Finanical Times, that he never ‘set out’ to complete a found round and also said: ‘We raised record-breaking sums twice in 2021. Ultimately, I’m a firm believer in raising well before you think you might need it. Building an outstanding alternative to university is not a small endeavour.’
The Daily Mail revealed last month that Euan had bought himself a five-storey west London townhouse costing £22m which features an ‘iceberg basement’ with a swimming pool.
He was able to make the purchase after venture capitalist investors last year allowed him to sell £320million-worth of shares to buy a home.
His seven-bedroom house, originally two terrace properties, has a basement, an indoor pool and gym among numerous facilities. A vehicle lift ferries cars to the underground garage. Above, a 50ft-long, double-height reception room on the lower ground floor has a galleried landing leading to the bedrooms.
The property was converted from two town houses and has seven bedrooms
Tony and Cherie Blair also has a country house in Buckinghamshire, pictured
Euan created his business, Multiverse, with a merchant banking friend in 2016, and now is the major owner, with up to half the shares. The company is paid by blue chip firms to recruit and train apprentices in the tech field
He is starting to match his father’s impressive property empire, with his Georgian five-storey townhouse in London believed to be worth around £10million, as is his Grade I-listed manor house in Buckinghamshire.
A source close to Euan said: ‘It’s a joint property with his wife Suzanne – and there is a mortgage. People might be surprised he has such a house so young – but he’s doing a good thing, trying to make apprenticeships grow.’
Euan’s mother Cherie famously gave him a leg up on to the property ladder 20 years ago, when she bought a £265,000 flat, plus a second one to rent out, for him to live in while studying ancient history at Bristol University.
He did an unpaid Capitol Hill internship with Republican David Dreier and Republican Party staff at the United States House of Representatives but left early moving onto London public relations company Finsbury Limited.
Then he got an M.A. in International Relations with a £50,000 scholarship at Yale University, it was reported by the Daily Mail in 2008, but claims higher education taught him ‘nothing’ that proved useful.
He said: ‘[Graduates and him] had no divine right to be there… it was a consequence of a system that was obsessed with using academics, with all the latent biases and problems inherent in that, to select people.’
Euan also joined the world of investment banking, with a graduate job at Morgan Stanley and was reported to be a runner in the film V for Vendetta.
Leo Blair (centre), the youngest son of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Cherie Blair (right), listen to Mr Blair during a speech to mark the 120th anniversary of the founding of the Labour party in February
Nicky Blair, pictured with his mum, is a football agent and gave his parents their first grandchild
The father of one was introduced to his wife by former defence secretary Geoff Hoon while she was on work experience.
Suzanne Ashman, the daughter of motor racing entrepreneur Jonathan Ashman, married Euan in 2013 after seven years together. She is now a partner at venture capital firm Local Globe.
In 2017, at the age of 29, his wife was listed as a prominent European financier on prestigious business publication Forbes’s 30 under 30 list.
Euan is not the only successful Blair child, with all of them millionaires through property alone after their parents gave them a leg up on to the property ladder.
Tony Blair’s second son Nicky is a successful football agent while his only daughter Kathryn followed in her mother’s footsteps and became a barrister. Their youngest child Leo is a Labour party member, having joined when Jeremy Corbyn was leader.
All of them have been helped on to the property ladder by their parents, who have a £37million property empire.
Inside Euan Blair’s billion pound Multiverse company – which used to be called WhiteHat and has achieved ‘unicorn’ status
It is the UK’s first EdTech firm to achieve unicorn status after being valued at 1.7 billion US dollars (£1.4 billion) in its latest fund round. A unicorn is when a startup that is privately owned has a valuation that exceeds $1 billion.
Euan created his business, Multiverse, with merchant banking friend Sophie Adelman in 2016, and now is the major owner, with up to half the shares.
The company is paid by blue chip firms to recruit and train apprentices in the tech field. The latest funding injection of 220 million US dollars (£175 million) has come from US investment firm StepStone Group, and previous investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and General Catalyst.
Euan Blair co-founded the start-up with friend Sophie Adelman in 2016. Pictured with Multiverse board member and president, Jeremy Duggan (right)
The former PM and his wife own a magnificent townhouse in London – although it is smaller than their son’s
It is understood Euan (pictured when company was WhiteHat) has a stake of between 25% and 50% of the business, now worth up to £677 million on paper
It is understood Euan has a stake of between 25% and 50% of the business, now worth up to £677 million on paper.
The education tech firm formerly known as WhiteHat, works with business ranging from Facebook and Zoopla to Warner Bros and BP, matching young people with apprenticeships based on their skills.
It set the record for the UK’s largest EdTech venture round in 2021 and has had injections of capital from General Catalyst, Google Ventures, Index Ventures, Audacious Ventures, Latitude and SemperVirens. These institutions were supported by angel investors including John W. Thomson, Chairman of Microsoft, and Jeremy Darroch, Chairman of Sky.
But it has had its setbacks as well. Multiverse Group Ltd, lost £10.9 million in 2021 on top of more than £5 million in 2020, the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden revealed. Including its previous years’ losses, the total reaches £18.8 million.
Multiverse said in December: ‘The movement in net loss year-on-year reflects the ongoing investment in the business and our commitment to building support functions that will allow the organisation to scale.
‘We have made significant investments across all teams at Multiverse to set ourselves up for greater scale.’
The Multiverse offers an alternative to university as the path to a tech career and it has helped more than 8,000 into apprenticeships globally.
Its website states: ‘Our mission is to create a diverse group of future leaders. To achieve this, we provide high-quality apprenticeship programmes that combine work, training and community.
‘Since starting in 2016, we’ve grown across the UK, training over 5,000 apprentices in partnership with more than 200 of the world’s best employers.
‘Focusing on the skills of the future, our programmes range from business operations to data science and software engineering. Our mission is global, so in 2021 we launched in the US.’
Tony Blair, pictured with his wife Cherie following the wedding of their son Euan to Suzanne Ashman on September 14, 2013 in Wooton Underwood, Buckinghamshire
Britain’s former Prime Minister Tony Blair poses for photographers along with his family (L-R) sons Nicky, Euan, wife Cherie, son Leo and daughter Kathryn in 2005
Apprentices are offered a minimum £15,000 salary (£18 to £21k on average) while being placed at top firms by Muiltverse which it promises will likely lead to a job in their field. It claims 95% of apprentices who completed our programmes landed a job within 90 days.
It gives these trainees free application and interview advice for the advanced data, data, digital marketing, software engineering and digital business accelerator fellowships.
One Data Fellowship Apprentice, Cartomu, said: ‘Multiverse apprenticeships give young people like me more options. We don’t have to worry about our financial situation, whilst getting an education that’s relevant and useful.’
For its employers it matches employers with apprentices through data promising to reach ‘high potential, underrepresented talent that is typically hard to reach’ and offering an outstanding-rated Ofsted teaching programme to help apprentices succeed.
It works with Morgan Stanley, Capital, the NHS, Citi Bank, KPMG and Laing O’Rourke.
The group claims that 56% of the apprentices it has placed are people of colour, more than half are women and 34% come from economically under-served communities.
The company which operates in the US wants to help those without higher education as two-thirds of Americans do not have a college degree, even though 65% of jobs require some college of a bachelor’s degree.
Multiverse said this disproportionately excludes black and Hispanic Americans, while it also means companies are missing out on reaching a pool of potential talent and new recruits at a time when hiring is challenging.
