Pleasanton, California-based upskilling platform Degreed has raised $32 million in new funding ‘in response to overwhelming demand for better skill insights, talent mobility, and a user-focused learning experience,’ the company has announced in a press statement.
The round was led by Owl Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests in the world’s leading education technology companies, bringing the company’s total funding to $182 million.
Degreed trains employees to enhance their skillset and create skill profiles. It integrates and curates all the resources people use to learn, including learning management systems and millions of courses, videos, articles, books, and podcasts. The company uses behavioural and data science to analyse everyone’s skills, and to automatically personalise career development based on their jobs, strengths, and goals.
According to Human Resource Executive, 75% to 80% of workers don’t complete their HR system’s talent profile, leaving organisations without a critical data set needed to inform agile business decisions. Degreed helps companies overcome this gap by enabling employees to develop their skills and create skill profiles.
Speaking about the company, Chris McCarthy, CEO of Degree, said in a statement,
“We’ve seen a tremendous surge in client demand for our career mobility product. It’s more important than ever for companies to understand the skills of their workforce, enrich their upskilling programmes, and enable internal mobility. Employees don’t care about a system of record that they see 1-2 times per year. They need a simple, personalised experience that helps them build their skills and advance their careers.”
According to the company's press release, the funding will accelerate Degreed’s career mobility roadmap. It said the latest funding comes after record demand for Degreed in the last 6 months. The company has claimed that more than one in seven of its users has activated their accounts between April and May this year alone. It also claimed that new clients, including Ford, Fidelity Investments, and South Africa’s Standard Bank, have quickly shifted their workforce strategies to empower remote work and talent mobility.
Commenting on the funding, Ian Chiu, Managing Director, Owl Ventures, said,
“The workforce has fundamentally shifted over the past months, and organisations are investing further in their people and skills. The need for lifelong learning is greater than ever and with this latest funding round, Degreed is well-positioned to shape a future where a person’s skills are the measure of their success and not their job titles. Where nobody becomes irrelevant because of a lack of the right skills at the right time.”
Degreed is the workforce upskilling platform for one in three Fortune 50 companies. It claims to help over 4 million people at over 250 organisations build the skills they need to invent the future. The company is headquartered in Pleasanton, California, and currently has additional offices in Salt Lake City, New York, London, Amsterdam, and Brisbane.
