Corporate e-learning platform Articulate closes $1.5bn Series A

Articulate, a virtual training platform based in New York and founded in 2002, has closed its first ever fundraise and it’s a big one.

The company has raised $1.5 billion in a Series A round led by General Atlantic, Blackstone Growth and Iconiq Growth.

This brings its total funding to $3.75 billion, according to VentureBeat.

The company claims that 106,000 companies – including all but one of the Fortune 100 – use its corporate e-learning products to virtually train their staff.

Its two core products are Articulate 360 and Rise.

Articulate 360 gives companies access to authoring apps and more than seven million course assets, as well as the ability to develop their own custom, interactive training for individual companies that they can host on their own learning management system (LMS).

While Rise is an all-in-one product that both helps with course design, but also enrolling learners and tracking their progress. This can be run without companies having to have their own LMS.

Importantly both of these products allow companies to move all of their training online, something which has been invaluable with the shift to remote working and the emergence of distributed teams.

Another reason why Articulate has done so well, CEO Adam Schwartz told Venture Beat, is that there has been a “consumerization of the enterprise”. This means employees expect similar quality tech in their work lives as they have in their work lives.

In addition, there has been a so-called “democratization of training” where any employee can become a teacher in the workplace.

Articulate caters to this, according to Schwartz, by making “it simple to turn content consumers (learners) into content makers (teachers) in the same way that YouTube does”.

But now was the right time to do it’s fundraise because “we wanted to bring great growth partners to the table to lend their best-in-class expertise and resources…. the round was less about capital and much more about partnership,” concluded Schwarz.

It looks like Articulate, and the broader corporate e-learning market, has a very promising future in a world of work that looks set to be hybrid, flexible and remote.