With private company defaults running at upward of 9.2% — the highest rate in years — VC firm Lux Capital recently advised companies relying on AI to get their compute capacity commitments confirmed in writing . With financial instability rippling through the AI supply chain, Lux warned, a handshake agreement isn’t enough.

But there’s another option entirely, which is to stop relying on external compute infrastructure altogether. Smaller AI models that run directly on a user’s own device — no data center, no cloud provider, no counterparty risk — are getting good enough to be worth considering. And Multiverse Computing is raising its hand.

The Spanish startup has so far kept a lower profile than some of its peers, but as demand for AI efficiency grows, this is changing.…