Remote learning tools are becoming increasingly popular as back-to-school season arrives and the pandemic presses on. This summer, many Bay Area edtech startups have seen renewed financial interest from investors with a keen eye on the future.
In that vein, remote learning platform Springboard announced Wednesday it raised $31 million in a Series B round led by Telstra Ventures.
The San Francisco-based company offers a range of six-month to nine-month online courses for people pursuing jobs in the tech industry. Subjects include data analytics, UI/UX design and software engineering.
“We started Springboard seven years ago with a dream to transform education,” Gautam Tambay, co-founder and CEO of Springboard, said in a statement, “We’ve seen that through our career track programs, [we’re] not only transforming education — we’re also transforming lives.”
The company intends to use the new financing to build several new features for its platform, including an AI-driven job matching tool. Springboard’s AI identifies open roles at the company’s employer partners and matches students to jobs based on their backgrounds and skill sets.
“We are in the middle of the largest global labor market shift in over a century; millions of displaced workers are now looking to make the difficult transition into new, in-demand careers,” Tambay continued. “Our remote-first, mentor-guided model is uniquely positioned to serve not only these individuals but also universities and employers who need help navigating today’s new economic reality.”
According to the company, 94 percent of Springboard alumni secure a job within a year of graduation.
“Unlike most online learning companies, we focus on employability — this simply means we support our graduates to get hired,” Tambay said.
Moving forward, the company plans to grow its course list to include job skillset training for other industries.
Springboard has raised $53.2 million in venture capital to date, according to Crunchbase. Vulcan Capital and SJF Ventures, among others, also participated in the round.
