The Multiverse AI: Revenue, sale and how it was built
The Multiverse AI (AI headshot generator, Singapore): Sold at an undisclosed price after US$348.5K in Stripe revenue, July 2025. Evidence grade A: disclosed by a company or a filing, or verified by a payment processor. Team: 3 co-founders, working part-time at first, and 1 customer support contractor at the sale. Launched April 2023; sold 27 months after launch.Added 26 October 2026
- Outcome
- Sold at an undisclosed price after US$348.5K in Stripe revenue, July 2025
- Evidence
- A disclosed by a company or a filing, or verified by a payment processor
- Launch
- April 2023
- Status
- Sold, 27 months after launch
- Team
- 3 co-founders, working part-time at first, and 1 customer support contractor at the sale
- Outside funding
- None (each co-founder put in US$700)
- Group
- Photos and portraits
- Main channel
- Search and AI answers
The Multiverse AI is an AI headshot generator: a service that makes professional-looking portrait photos of a person from ordinary selfies, without a photographer. The customer pays once, uploads 12 to 15 photos, and the service trains a private model on that one face, a form of fine-tuning, which means training an existing image model a little further on new examples so that it can draw that specific person. The home page says the model "exists only to generate your images". The customer then receives about 100 headshots in different clothes and backgrounds.
Tanya Van Gastel (marketing), Anika Lakdawala (design) and Zeeshaan Lakdawala (engineering) launched it in late April 2023 as a side project, with US$700 each and no investors. Tanya Van Gastel wrote that it reached US$75,000 in total revenue in its first nine months and US$20,000 in January 2024. It was sold through Flippa, a marketplace for buying and selling online businesses, in an all-cash deal in mid-2025. The price and the buyer's name are not public. Flippa's listing says its team verified revenue of US$221,853 and profit of US$150,724 in the year before the sale.
The headline number comes from Stripe, the payment processor that took the customers' card payments. IndiePage, a site where founders connect their Stripe accounts, shows US$348,517 in all-time revenue for The Multiverse AI, grade A. Archived copies show that this total grew by only US$539 after 15 July 2025 and has not changed since September 2025, so it is the revenue before the sale. No source gives revenue after the sale. The page also shows earlier photo companies that lost to a free tool from a larger company.
How much did The Multiverse AI make, and what was it sold for?
Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.
| Fact | Value | Grade | How we know | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All-time revenue on Stripe, read 25 October 2026 | US$348,517 | A | IndiePage all-time leaderboard, rank 32. The page says: "Revenue is fetched from Stripe and updated every 12 hours". The same figure appears in archived copies from 28 September 2025 to 10 September 2026, so it no longer grows. | [1, 2] |
| All-time revenue on Stripe, 15 July 2025 | US$347,978 | A | Archived copy of the IndiePage all-time leaderboard, rank 19. Copies before July 2025 do not list the product. | [2] |
| Revenue added after 15 July 2025 | US$539 | calc | Calculated: US$348,517 minus US$347,978. The connected Stripe account almost stopped receiving payments in July 2025, which matches the sale date below. | [2] |
| Gross revenue in the year before the listing | US$221,853, with US$150,724 profit | B | Flippa listing, marked "Vetted Listing": "Our vetting team has reviewed this listing and verified: Revenue, Primary Expenses, Traffic". The listing gives a 62% profit margin in its text and a monthly profit of US$12,288 at a 70% margin in its summary; it does not say which months each figure covers. | [3] |
| Profit margin from the two yearly figures | about 68% | calc | Calculated: US$150,724 divided by US$221,853. This does not match the 62% in the listing text, so the listing's figures probably cover slightly different periods. | [3] |
| Average revenue a month in that year | about US$18,488 | calc | Calculated: US$221,853 divided by 12. | [3] |
| The sale | all cash, no earn-out, closed within about a month of listing on Flippa; price not disclosed | B | Flippa's blog post on the sale. An earn-out is a part of the price paid later only if the business reaches targets; there was none. The listing shows the asking price as "Classified". | [4, 3] |
| Date of the sale | between 10 July and 3 August 2025 | C | From archived copies of the home page: the footer reads "TheMultiverseAI PTE. LTD." on 10 July 2025 and "The Omniverse LLC" on 3 August 2025. The Stripe total stopped growing in the same weeks. No source gives the exact closing day. | [12, 2] |
| The buyer | an e-commerce entrepreneur in the United States | B | Flippa describes the buyer as an e-commerce entrepreneur with experience in growing direct-to-consumer brands through paid ads; the listing gives the buyer's location as the United States and the seller's as Belgium. Since the sale the about page says the site "is operated by The Omniverse LLC". No source names a person as the buyer. | [4, 3, 11] |
| Revenue in the first nine months | US$75,000 in total; record month US$20,000 in January 2024 | C | Tanya Van Gastel's newsletter, first written in February 2024. She wrote that the goal had been US$10,000 by the end of 2023. | [7] |
| Revenue, June 2024 | US$30,000 | C | The same newsletter lists "June 2024 : $30k USD revenue (14 months after launch)". It is listed next to the US$20,000 month of January 2024, so it is read here as one month's revenue. | [7] |
| Revenue six months after launch | US$5,000 a month | C | Founder interview, Side Hustle Show, October 2025. | [5] |
| Revenue shown on the founder's IndiePage profile | US$5.1K a month on 21 May 2025, marked "For Sale"; US$0 on 11 September 2025 | C | Archived copies of Zeeshaan Lakdawala's IndiePage profile. The profile does not say which period the monthly figure covers. | [8] |
| Total revenue as the founder told it | over US$350,000 | C | Side Hustle Show, 6 October 2025. Slightly above the Stripe total; no source says whether some revenue came outside Stripe. | [5, 6] |
| Paid users after nine months | more than 3,000 | C | Tanya Van Gastel's newsletter. | [7] |
| Team at the sale | 3 co-founders and 1 customer support contractor | B | Flippa's blog post and listing. The co-founders worked on it beside full-time jobs at first. | [4, 3, 7] |
| Outside funding | none; US$700 from each co-founder | C | Flippa's blog post and the founder's newsletter: "zero investments, zero money raised". | [4, 7] |
| Affiliate commission | 30% of each sale, paid after the sale | C | Founder interview. The best affiliate writer earned US$10,000 a month, so that writer brought in about US$30,000 a month of sales. | [5] |
| Conversion rates | about 5% from search traffic, about 12% from affiliate traffic | C | Founder interview. Conversion rate is the share of visitors who buy. | [5] |
| First large company order | US$4,000 | C | Founder interview. After it the company wrote content for "team headshots" and "headshots for remote teams". | [5] |
| Time from launch to the sale | 27 months | calc | Calculated: April 2023 to July 2025. | [7, 12] |
How to read this table: a grade A value comes from the founders' Stripe account as IndiePage shows it. A grade B value was checked or stated by Flippa, the marketplace that handled the sale. A grade C value is a founder statement or the company's own page. A "calc" value was computed on this page from the rows above it.
| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual headshots, October 2026 | 29.99 one-time | 100+ headshots and 20 custom edits | |
| Team, 1 to 4 people | 35.99 one-time per person | 100 headshots per person, admin dashboard | |
| Team, 5 or more people | 28.79 one-time per person | calculated: 20% off | |
| Team, 10 or more people | 25.19 one-time per person | calculated: 30% off | |
| Team, 50 or more people | 21.59 one-time per person | as shown on the page: 40% off | |
| Individual, June 2024 to July 2025 | 29 one-time | archived copies of the home page | |
| Individual, December 2023 | 24 one-time | archived copy of the home page | |
| First price, 2023 | 9 one-time | founder interview |
Every price is a one-time payment, not a subscription. The individual order includes 100+ headshots and 20 custom edits. Team prices fall with the number of people: 20% off from 5 people, 30% from 10 and 40% from 50; the 5+ and 10+ prices below were calculated on this page from the listed discounts. The service adds 40 free photos to an order when the customer shares the results on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram or TikTok and tags the company.
When did The Multiverse AI launch, and how did it grow?
From a side project with US$2,100 of the founders' own money to an all-cash sale, in about 27 months. Each entry carries its grade.
- 2022CAnika, Tanya and Zeeshaan start The Multiverse AI as a side project, according to the about page of 2024. [10]
- Late April 2023CLaunch. About ten other AI headshot sites already exist. Tanya Van Gastel writes that she quit her full-time job that month. The first price is US$9. [7, 5]
- 2023, first salesCThe first US$500 of revenue comes from comments with links in Reddit threads about headshots. [5]
- Late 2023CUS$5,000 a month, six months after launch, the founder said. The price is US$24 in December 2023, paid through Stripe. [5, 12]
- January 2024CRecord month of US$20,000; US$75,000 in total after nine months and more than 3,000 paid users. The Multiverse AI for Teams has shipped, and teams of more than 200 members use it. [7]
- June 2024CUS$30,000 in revenue, 14 months after launch, the newsletter says. The price is US$29. [7, 12]
- December 2024CThe FAQ says the service uses the image model Flux. [12]
- May 2025CThe engineering co-founder's IndiePage profile marks the product "For Sale" at US$5.1K a month. The founders had tried other sale platforms for months. [8, 4]
- 15 July 2025AIndiePage shows US$347,978 in all-time Stripe revenue. [2]
- July 2025BSale on Flippa within about a month of listing, all cash, to a US e-commerce entrepreneur. By 3 August the site footer names The Omniverse LLC. [4, 3, 12]
- 28 September 2025AThe Stripe total stops at US$348,517. [2]
- 6 October 2025CTanya Van Gastel tells the Side Hustle Show that the business made over US$350,000 and that ChatGPT's new image generator was one reason to sell. [5, 6]
- 2026CThe new owner rebuilds the site, prices individual orders at US$29.99 and marks every image as AI-generated in its metadata. [9, 14]
- 25 October 2026AIndiePage still shows US$348,517. Zeeshaan Lakdawala's profile says: "Previously built and sold The Multiverse AI." [1, 8]
Why did The Multiverse AI work?
Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.
Search pages that buyers read
Tanya Van Gastel wrote a "Best AI Headshot Generators" article that ranked The Multiverse AI first, and she said it held the top place on Google for nearly six months. Journalists who searched for products to review found it, which led to mentions in Forbes and other outlets. The founders aimed at searches made just before a purchase, such as "best AI headshot generator", which brought few visitors but converted at about 5%.
Affiliates paid only after a sale
Bloggers who listed the service received 30% of each sale they sent, tracked with Rewardful. Because the commission was paid after the sale, it cost nothing up front. The founder said affiliate visitors bought at about 12%, which the show notes call nearly triple the rate from search, and that the best affiliate writer sent about US$30,000 a month in sales.
One buyer for many faces
A company ordered US$4,000 of headshots at once. As the founder put it, one decision maker could buy 400 headshots instead of 400 people deciding one by one. By June 2025 the home page promised every team a dedicated account manager and an admin dashboard, and remote teams were the target.
Low running costs and a one-time price
The Flippa listing describes a serverless setup on AWS and names AI server costs as the main expense. Serverless means the code runs only when an order arrives, so there is no idle server to pay for. With a one-time price and no subscription, Flippa's listing reported US$150,724 of profit on US$221,853 of revenue in the year before the sale.
How it was built
These details come from the founders' interviews, the Flippa listing and archived copies of the site from before the sale. Pages written by the new owner after July 2025 are not used here. [5, 3, 12, 7]
- The engineering co-founder built the platform from scratch; the marketing co-founder does not program.
- The customer uploads 12 to 15 selfies, the service trains a private model on them, and an email links to the finished headshots. In December 2024 the home page said this took 2 hours.
- The FAQ of December 2024 names Flux, an image model, as one of the models used, together with the company's own technology.
- The listing describes a serverless architecture on AWS, with cheap AI models as the main cost.
- Payments ran through Stripe, as the checkout said in December 2023; the Stripe account later fed the revenue shown on IndiePage.
- Affiliates were tracked with Rewardful, and Ahrefs was used to find high-ranking articles and Reddit threads.
- An "AI or Not" quiz, ten photos to label as real or AI-made, kept visitors on the site while their headshots were being made.
Tools named in the sources
Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.
Who tried this before The Multiverse AI, and why did they fail?
Four companies in the Loot Drop database sold photo tools or a human service that a larger company or a general technology then gave away or made cheaper. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.
Picnik
The promiseSimple photo editing in the browser, with nothing to install.
Why it diedGoogle bought it and closed it to fold its features into Google+.
Snipshot
The promiseEdit photos in the browser instead of buying Adobe software.
Why it diedLarger rivals and free tools did the same thing, and the simple product could not compete.
Everalbum
The promiseUnlimited photo storage with automatic AI organization.
Why it diedIt charged for features that Google Photos gave away for free.
TurboTranslations
The promiseFast, cheap human translation from a crowd of translators.
Why it diedMachine translation became good enough at the same time, and the human service lost its price advantage.
The failed startups come from Loot Drop, a free database of dead startups, retold here in our own words. Loot Drop describes its entries as AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so these cards carry no evidence grade.
What changed
The first three sold photo tools and lost when Google gave away something similar for free. TurboTranslations sold a human service and lost when a general technology learned to do the job. The Multiverse AI faced both risks at once: about ten rival headshot sites at launch, and in 2025 a general chat model that could make similar images. The show notes of October 2025 say that ChatGPT had just launched an image generator that "could almost do what Multiverse.ai did", and quote Tanya Van Gastel: when a product "can easily be replaced by ChatGPT and you have a potential for an exit, that was super attractive to us".
Two things differed. The costs were small: three co-founders who kept their jobs at first, US$2,100 of their own money, a serverless setup and no advertising, so the business was profitable early instead of needing years of funding. And the founders sold early. Flippa's listing reported US$150,724 of profit in the year before the sale, and the buyer, an e-commerce entrepreneur, planned to grow it with paid ads, a channel the founders had never used.
Can one person copy The Multiverse AI now?
The product, hardly. The method and the exit, yes.
In October 2026 the AI headshot market is crowded, and general image models can make headshots from a prompt, which is why the founders sold. What can be copied is the method: a one-time price for a clear result, pages that rank for the searches made just before a purchase, affiliates paid only after a sale, a team version for companies, and a sale before the general models catch up.
Where it is still open: Other one-time AI results for professionals, such as product photos for small shops, real-estate photos or profile videos, where consent and a clear result matter more than the model.
- 1Find a result that people buy once and that a new AI model can now produce cheaply, and sell it at one clear price.
- 2Write pages for the searches buyers make just before they pay, and keep the business costs small enough to be profitable without ads.
- 3Pay affiliate writers a share of each sale after it happens, and track it with an affiliate tool.
- 4Add a version for companies when the first company order arrives.
- 5Prepare a clean profit-and-loss statement six months before you want to sell, and list on a marketplace with many buyers.
What could go wrong for The Multiverse AI?
The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.
The price and the buyer are not public
Flippa shows the asking price as classified, and no source gives the sale price. The site has been operated by The Omniverse LLC since the sale, but no source says who owns that company. The listing shows multiples of 0.8 times profit and 0.5 times revenue without saying how they were calculated, so they are not used here to estimate a price.
Stripe may not show all revenue
The Stripe total of US$348,517 is a little below the founder's "over US$350,000". IndiePage does not say whether refunds and fees are subtracted, and some company orders may have been paid another way. The Flippa listing's own margins (62%, 68% when calculated, 70% a month) do not agree exactly.
Revenue was lower before the sale
The newsletter gives US$30,000 for June 2024. The engineering co-founder's IndiePage profile showed US$5.1K a month in May 2025, while the product was for sale. Flippa's own advice in the sale story is to list before revenue declines. No source gives revenue after the sale, and the buyer publishes none.
The founders' own marketing tactics
Source: Side Hustle Nation's show notes of 6 October 2025 for Tanya Van Gastel's interview (source 5). For the first sales she searched Reddit for threads about headshots and commented with links to the site, and the notes say: "She created multiple accounts, knowing most would get banned." The same notes say she paid some high-ranking bloggers for a top place in their lists of AI headshot generators, and quote her: "You're basically seeing that it's an ad placement at that point." Accounts made to get around bans break most communities' rules, and readers of a paid list may not know that it is paid. These were the founders' tactics, not features of the product, and no source says that the founders bought customer reviews.
Faces are sensitive data
The service trains a model on a person's face. The current terms say: "You may only upload photographs of yourself, or photographs of another person for whom you hold that person's explicit permission", and for teams each person must consent at their own upload. These rules are the new owner's; this page did not find the rules of 2023 to 2025.
Sources
The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.
- A IndiePage all-time revenue leaderboard, read 25 October 2026Read in full. Shows The Multiverse AI at rank 32 with US$348,517 and the note "Revenue is fetched from Stripe and updated every 12 hours".
- A IndiePage leaderboard, Wayback Machine copies of 15 July 2025, 28 September 2025, 7 October 2025, 20 January 2026, 16 June 2026 and 10 September 2026Read the all-time table in each copy. US$347,978 on 15 July 2025, then US$348,517 in every copy from 28 September 2025. Copies before July 2025 do not list the product.
- B Flippa listing 11938599: An AI headshot generator with $+300,000 USD revenue, +60% profit margins, marked SOLDRead the public part in full; the financial details need an account and were not read. Source for the vetted revenue and profit, the team, the AWS setup and the buyer and seller locations.
- B Flippa blog by Tory Gregory, updated 16 January 2026: Taking the Leap, Tanya Van Gastel from first-time founder to successful sellerRead in full; this short address redirects to the post. The marketplace's own account of the sale: all cash, about a month after listing, no earn-out, the buyer's background, the team and the US$700 per co-founder.
- C Side Hustle Nation, show notes by Nick Loper, 6 October 2025: From $9 to $350K, How I Built and Sold an AI-Powered WebsiteThe live page answered with a bot check, so the Wayback Machine copy of 11 November 2025 was read in full. Founder interview. Source for the first price, the Reddit, search and affiliate tactics, the company order and the reason to sell.
- C The Side Hustle Show, episode 700, 6 October 2025, episode page on AudioboomRead the episode description in full. Confirms the date and "drove over $350,000 in revenue, and sold the business".
- C Electric Dreams newsletter by Tanya Van Gastel, 13 August 2024 (first written February 2024): How to get to 75,000 USD revenue on $0 advertising spend?Read in full. Co-founder's own account. Source for the launch, the revenue to June 2024, the paid users, the three co-founders and the lack of investors.
- C Zeeshaan Lakdawala's IndiePage profile, read 25 October 2026, with Wayback copies of 21 May 2025 and 11 September 2025Read in full in each version. Source for "Previously built and sold The Multiverse AI" and the monthly figure while the product was for sale.
- C The Multiverse AI home page, read 25 October 2026 (under the new owner)Read in full. Source for the current product, the private model per customer and the individual price.
- C The Multiverse AI about page, Wayback copy of 2024Read in full. Names the three co-founders and their roles, and says they started in 2022.
- C The Multiverse AI about page, read 25 October 2026Read in full. Source for "The Multiverse AI is operated by The Omniverse LLC".
- C The Multiverse AI home page, Wayback copies from May 2023 to August 2026Read twelve copies for the footer owner, the price and the FAQ. Source for the change of owner between 10 July and 3 August 2025, the prices of 2023 to 2025, Stripe at checkout and Flux.
- C The Multiverse AI team headshots page, read 25 October 2026Read in full. Source for the team prices and discounts and the consent of each team member.
- C The Multiverse AI terms and AI safety and privacy pages, read 25 October 2026Read both in full (the second at /ai-safety-and-privacy). Source for the upload and consent rules and the AI-generated label in each image's metadata.
- C Loot Drop database export, 1,749 failed startupsLocal export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.