South Africa: Corporate education platform raises $200m
Go1, one of the world’s largest corporate education content hubs for on-demand training and resources, recently announced a $200 million series D round – valuing the company at more than $1 billion. The online learning platform, co-founded by South African Melvyn Lubega and Australian Andrew Barnes together with their friends from high school, will be using this new investment to create new partnerships, expand its edtech product offerings, and grow its physical presence globally to support its more than 3.5 million learners at over 1,600 customer organisations worldwide.
This series D funding round was led by new investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2, alongside AirTree Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Blue Cloud Ventures, Larsen Ventures, TEN13, and Tiger Global. Previous investors include Endeavor Global Catalyst, M12 (Microsoft’s venture capital fund), Madrona Venture Group, SEEK, and Y Combinator. To date, the company has raised $280 million total, inclusive of previous rounds.
In 2015, Go1 set out to become a learning and professional development resource for organisations and a critical distribution partner for content providers. Its easy integration and breadth of content have led to widespread adoption on both sides – corporations that now have a single subscription for all workplace training needs, and corporate learning content creators whose insights can find their way to a larger audience. Go1’s content aggregation approach reimagines corporate education, enabling organisations to utilise learning, training and certification content from a variety of resources via its SaaS platform or by integrating into existing learning systems.
“When people think about music, they often think of Spotify and access to unlimited music for one subscription. We believe Go1 is the emerging category leader in providing a similar experience for corporate learning. Powered by AI and machine learning, Go1’s platform provides an intuitive experience, and creates an opportunity for individuals to expand their professional development goals and explore the resources to help achieve them,” says Nagraj Kashyap, managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “With premier education providers such as EdX, Coursera, Skillsoft, and Harvard as part of Go1’s subscription, organisations can curate learning content to fit the needs and interests of its workforce. We are delighted to partner with Melvyn, Andrew and the Go1 team to help advance their vision of reaching one billion learners.”
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