Venture Capital

NEA Leads $16 Million Series A in Workera.ai

PALO ALTO — Workera.ai, operator of a precision upskilling platform, has completed a $16 million Series A. This latest round of funding follows a seed round of $5M in October 2020. The Series A was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) alongside existing investors Owl Ventures and AI Fund, as well as Richard Socher of AIX Ventures, Pieter Abbeel, Lake Dai and Mehran Sahami.

This new capital will be used to accelerate product development and fuel the company’s go-to-market strategy.

As corporate and government spending to develop data, machine learning and AI skills is poised to exceed US$79 billion by 2022, Workera’s solution helps organizations, governments, and individuals such as Siemens Energy to close the enterprise skills gap and support their digital transformations. The company’s innovative, precision upskilling platform includes adaptive assessments, a taxonomy of over 3,000 micro-skills, and personalized learning plans. With assessments tailored to both technical and non-technical roles, Workera supports digital literacy across the organization.

With an ocean of learning content providers to choose from today, it can be hard to select the right options. Workera guides users with targeted resources that support skill development for their role and is based on their current level of proficiency. The iterative assessments provide workers with a feedback loop throughout the upskilling journey that supports continuous learning and skill development.

“Our mission is to help humanity achieve its fullest potential by providing world-class, AI-driven mentorship at scale,” says Kian Katanforoosh, Workera CEO. “We want everyone to be able to thrive professionally and this requires precise guidance. With Workera, it’s now possible to identify the workforce’s most effective path to innovation.”

“The Workera solution is incredibly important—the company is solving a key strategic challenge for enterprises and governments by helping to ensure that their employees and citizens have the skills to build the future,” said Carmen Chang, General Partner and Head of Asia at NEA.

“As technology advances, skills need to be refreshed regularly, creating a need for new capabilities in every role and every profession,” added Scott Sandell, Managing General Partner, NEA. “We’re thrilled to partner with Workera on a promising solution to this business challenge.”

Using Workera, global Fortune 500 companies across a number of industries, including professional services, medical devices and energy, are able to easily index their technical proficiency, streamline and customize upskilling for employees, and measure the impact of their investment.