On a laptop, the engineers demonstrate how a drone can pinpoint precisely what is in its sights. Using the ordinary workhorse computer processors known as CPUs, the device can identify encroaching enemy tanks and soldiers, for example, and zip only that information back to military units, using a compressed AI model that’s vastly cheaper and more energy-efficient than the behemoth large language models that power chatbots like ChatGPT. “You need an AI system that is super-frugal,” says Enrique Lizaso Olmos, Multiverse’s CEO and one of four cofounders, as the program quickly picks out a tank. “The drones use very, very, very little energy,” he adds, even when monitoring a situation that “is getting more and more complex.”
Multiverse, like its AI models, is currently small—predicted sales this year are a modest $25 million. But it’s onto a big idea. Its work focuses on compressing large language platforms, or LLMs, and creating smaller models, in the belief that most consumers and business customers can do just fine with lower-powered but thoughtfully designed AI that needs less power and fewer chips to run.
Some experts question how well compressed AI models can truly perform. But the concept has plenty of believers. Multiverse’s clients include manufacturers, financial-services companies, utilities, and defense contractors, among them big names like Bosch, Moody’s, and Bank of Canada.
More recently, Multiverse has begun collaborating with Deloitte and Intel on running public services in the U.S., including a state Medicaid platform, using its SLMs. “There are tons and tons of applications where to a user you will not see any big difference,” says Burnie Legette, AI senior solutions architect for Intel’s government technologies group. But the savings to taxpayers are potentially huge. “To run an LLM is very, very expensive,” he says.
By focusing on creating super-small, affordable AI, Multiverse is tackling head-on an issue that has become increasingly urgent in Silicon Valley and in corporate C-suites. In the scramble to ramp up AI capabilities, many have begun wondering whether the giant investments AI requires will pay off—or whether the costs that LLMs’ power demands inflict on the environment will outweigh the benefits. (For its potential in addressing the latter issue, Multiverse earned a spot on Fortune’s 2025 Change the World list.)
Read the full article here: https://fortune.com/2025/10/09/artificial-intelligence-multiverse-computing-compressed-ai-models-slms/