To minimise the spread of COVID-19, many schools, across the world, have shut down and remote learning has become the only solution to move forward. Many edtech startups have stepped up their game to help teachers, students, and parents to navigate the “new normal” of teaching. The same is just as true in the corporate world, with companies not only having to transition to remote work, but also to figure out how to coach and upskill their workforce. This is where Sweden-based Sana Labs wants to make the difference.
Sana Labs raises €14.9M
In a recent development, the Stockholm-based Sana Labs, a startup that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to personalise training courses for professionals, has raised $18M (approx €14.9M) in its series A round of funding.
With this round, the startup has raised a total of $23M (approx €19M) in funding, to date.
Investors in this round
The round was led by EQT Ventures. Joel Hellermark, founder of Sana Labs says, “I first met EQT Venture partner Ted Persson when I was interning at Great Works back in 2010. A pioneer in technology, product design, and branding, Ted has been a hero ever since. Thus, I couldn’t be more excited to partner with Ted, former Spotify VP of Analytics Henrik Landgren, former founder Sandra Malmberg, and the rest of the EQT team.”
Use of the raised capital
The Sweden-based company says it will use the funds to boost headcount and sales-focused marketing. In addition, the funds will also be invested in R&D for its platform, which uses machine learning to personalise programmes to a person’s individual learning style and ability.
About Sana Labs
Founded in 2016 by Joel Hellermark, Sana Labs have developed a personalised, adaptive learning platform that enables organisations to accelerate training across the workplace.
The company applies machine-learning to tailor reskilling and upskilling, with the aim of accelerating time to mastery, improving engagement, and delivering rich learning analytics.
It claims to partner with Fortune 500 organisations to bring the benefits of AI to millions of learners. Its team consists of researchers and engineers with backgrounds ranging from Google AI and Spotify to BCG Gamma and Imperial College.
“We believe in educational empowerment”
According to the company, the global learning industry is vast, valued at over $6T in 2018, and is undergoing a sea-change with the move to digital and online instruction, materials, and modalities. The shift to digital and online resources is enabling what many educators consider to be the holy grail of learning – personalised, adaptive instruction and assessment.
With the Sana platform, the company aims to be the engine that drives this change forward – fundamentally improving the entire industry’s capability to educate and directly impacting millions of peoples’ lives every day.
The company also mentioned in its website that about 2,000 hospitals have adopted the Sana platform to provide efficient skill development to more than 80,000 healthcare professionals in the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. This was done by analysing each nurse’s knowledge gap and personalised the learning path accordingly.
Besides, the platform is also used by some of the world’s major companies including Novartis, Amgen, Mount Sinai and PepsiCo for upskilling and reskilling.
