Algo huele raro en Multiverse Computing

Algo huele raro en Multiverse Computing

Something smells fishy at Multiverse Computing

🎙 La TERTULia de la Inteligencia Artificial Podcast 👥 672 📅 September 4, 2026 ⏱ 39 min 👁 877 📄 expert opinion 🧭 2026-10-15
Available in: English (current) Français

Keywords

Multiverse ComputingQuasar 438BCompactifaiMixture of Expertspublic investment

Summary

The podcast episode, aired on September 4, 2026, analyzes the Spanish company Multiverse Computing, which received €500 million in funding and claims to be a leader in AI model compression using quantum-inspired techniques. The hosts, Josu Gorostegui and Guillermo Barbadillo, express strong skepticism about the company’s public narrative. They examine the company’s LinkedIn description, its paper describing the Compactifai method, and the recent release of the Quasar 438B model. After releasing Quasar, it was revealed that the model is actually a compressed version of the Chinese GLM 5.2, not an original frontier model as initially implied. The hosts point out that the tokenizer matches exactly, and community notes quickly flagged the misleading announcement. They compare the compression results with standard 4-bit quantization, finding that the claimed methods underperform in both size and accuracy based on the company’s own numbers. They also discuss the business implications, including whether the model can be served more cheaply than the original, which is not clearly the case. The episode concludes that while there is potential for a successful inference-optimization business, Multiverse’s lack of transparency and technical weaknesses make its claims dubious, especially given significant public investment.

192 words

Critical Evaluation

Value of the Information & Strength of the Argument

The value of the information is primarily in the critical dissection of public data. The hosts provide concrete details about the company’s investment, the Compactifai paper, and the Quasar announcement, and they expose logical inconsistencies, such as the naming of the 88% method and the fact that a standard quantization library outperforms it. The argumentation is sound and methodical: they first establish their baseline (state-of-the-art quantization), then compare the company’s numbers, then analyze the tokenizer test, and finally discuss the business model. They are careful to separate facts from inferences and explicitly state their subjective opinion. While some points rely on educated guesses (e.g., the expert pruning process), they are clearly labeled as such. The podcast excels at translating technical details for a general audience without oversimplifying, and it maintains a balanced tone by acknowledging the possibility that the company’s methods could be legitimate in the future.

Scientific Rigor, Source Quality, Title Accuracy

The analysis relies on publicly available sources: the company’s LinkedIn description, the Compactifai paper, the Quasar model announcement, and community discussions on Twitter. The hosts also reference the Artificial Analysis website for model comparisons, though no direct URL is provided. They explicitly note that they are not journalists and did not contact the company for a response, which is a potential limitation in rigor. The title ‘Algo huele raro en Multiverse Computing’ is a strong claim, but it is well-supported by the evidence presented. The podcast does not cite external scientific literature beyond the paper in question, but it does reference common technical concepts. Overall, the source quality is adequate for a critical opinion piece, though deeper validation of the technical claims would require access to the full paper and benchmark details.

294 words

Title / Content Match

The title accurately reflects the content: the hosts investigate and articulate multiple reasons to be skeptical about Multiverse Computing's claims and practices.

Quality & Reliability

7/10

The analysis is based on publicly available data (company claims, a published paper, and the model release) and the hosts are transparent about their lack of internal information. They carefully scrutinize numbers and expose inconsistencies, such as the 88% and 93% compression variants being worse than standard 4-bit quantization in some metrics. However, some assumptions (e.g., about expert pruning) are speculative and not fully verified.

Key Moments

Cited Sources

  • La TERTULia de la Inteligencia Artificial - Blog — The official blog of the podcast, mentioned in the video description as a source for more information.

Contribution & Novelties

This episode provides a critical, public-facing analysis of a European AI startup, highlighting discrepancies between marketing claims and technical reality. It contributes to the discussion of model compression by demonstrating how a standard technique (4-bit quantization) can outperform proprietary methods. The hosts also expose the practice of rebranding existing models without transparency, a growing concern in the AI industry. Their approach of using public data and simple tests (like tokenizer comparison) offers a replicable methodology for verifying model originality.

Pour aller plus loin :

  • Model compression (Wikipedia) — Overview of techniques including pruning, quantization, and knowledge distillation.
  • Mixture of experts (Wikipedia) — Architecture used in GLM 5.2 and other large models, relevant to expert pruning.
  • Quantization (signal processing) (Wikipedia) — Explanation of reducing precision in numerical representations, key to the discussed compression methods.
  • Artificial Analysis website — Independently evaluates AI models on performance and price, cited in the video for model comparisons.

152 words

Radar Profile

The radar profile shows a balanced set of scores, with quantity and technical level slightly higher than quality and reliability. This reflects an episode dense with factual data and technical detail, but where the analysis relies partly on inference and the hosts explicitly state their own opinions rather than verified findings.

Reliability 7/10