British startup Virti raises €8.4M to help companies train their workforce using VR, AR, AI; here’s how

UK-based digital training platform, Virti, has raised $10M (approx €8.4M) in its Series A round of funding. The round was led by deeptech investors IQ Capital and joined by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and a new, UK-based learning technology VC fund.

The funding comes at a pivotal time for the startup as demand for effective remote training solutions accelerated last year. Virti witnessed its revenues growth by 978 per cent as well as its workforce doubled in size.

Capital utilisation

The raised capital in this round will enable Virti to continue on its international growth, researching and developing new technologies to improve human performance. 

With this funding, the company has also appointed three important new hires. Kurt Kratchman and Mark Ashworth join Virti from Oracle as CRO and CFO/COO, respectively, while Michael Hernandez, previously at Nearpod, joins as the Head of Customer Success.

The Virti platform

Launched in 2018 by Dr Alexander Young – an NHS trauma and orthopaedic surgeon – Virti helps organisations optimise learning, training and performance using interactive simulations and AI-powered data analysis.

Dr Alexander Young, CEO and founder of Virti, says, “At Virti, our goal is to maximise human performance by making experiential learning affordable and accessible for everyone. In-person training has always been expensive with e-learning often unengaging – and research shows that employees forget upwards of 80 per cent of episodic training. Virti exists to help organisations get the very best out of their people, by improving how teams train, learn and perform using scalable deep learning technology with a focus on soft-skills.”

The company’s technology turns traditionally subjectively-assessed skills, such as communication, teamwork and decision-making under pressure, into objective and measurable data to improve performance.

Virti’s cloud-based, no-code simulation creation suite helps companies build bespoke training modules for analysing user performance using computer-vision AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Companies can access and deploy their simulations using mobile or desktop devices, or VR/AR headsets. The platform captures data across these three different mediums, applying data-science protocols to analyse, measure, and feedback on human performance.

Growth during Covid-19 crisis

With the pandemic, a lot of organisations are struggling to engage and scale their workforce to upskill. This is where Virti believes it has been tackling this issue. The company claims that its deep learning technology is improving training outcomes by up to 230 per cent while supporting individuals and organisations in the global shift towards remote and flexible ways of working.

Traditional methods such as lectures or in-person training – which is expensive and time-consuming, prove to be less effective when it comes to knowledge retention. These experiences lack the emotion and stress of the real world, leaving employees under-prepared with no objective way to know if they will perform when it matters. Virti claims its technology is helping people acquire knowledge faster and retain new skills for longer.

Dr Young explains, “On-the-job training can be serendipitous, with the learning experience varying significantly depending on where you are, what day it is and who is training you. Soft skills also tend to be subjectively assessed in most settings. We’re providing the tools to help organisations create and distribute evidence-based training, which can be standardised and scaled across organisations and geographies. The data insights our platform generates reduce training variability and generate objective feedback that can aid real-world improvement – with the ultimate goal of improving human performance.”

According to Virti, in the US, medical students have been using Virti’s NLP-powered ‘virtual human’ to practise soft skills such as explaining diagnoses, building patient trust, and handling challenging situations. The platform is also being used to facilitate the mass training of medics in developing countries, by enabling global expertise to be ‘beamed in’ from hospitals around the world.

Besides the healthcare sector, Virti’s technology is also used by universities, corporates, and public sector companies to teach soft skills, from crisis management to mindfulness. Also, the platform was used throughout the pandemic to rapidly and remotely train frontline healthcare workers to use PPE, navigate new wards, and manage infection risk.