France-based 360Learning announced a USD $200 million Private Equity investment for its collaborative learning management system (LMS). This brings its total raised to USD $242.6 million. The round was led by SoftBank. 360Learning had only raised $42.6 million in the 12 years leading up to this PE round.
Learning has aggressively and consistently transformed for the last ten years. The Chief Learning Officer (CLO) is in the hot seat. Fast-changing tech and consumerized user demands have been a challenge for the CLO to keep up with, to put it mildly. The pandemic and the C-suite’s focus on the need to upskill and reskill has exacerbated this. Learning is creeping into every facet of the employee experience, with some of the most interesting new models finding homes in talent acquisition. More than $3 billion has already been invested in learning in 2021, the leading category of work tech investment at this point in the year. There are some truly innovative models in the “innovation pipeline” for learning. We’re seeing learning take a hot seat in the development of internal and external talent leveraging content from major universities, content creators, and traditional corporate learning libraries.
360Learning much as you would expect any LMS to work with a visual, “card-based” interface, matching employees based on self defined interests and learning needs. The foundation of 360’s model is leveraging knowledge and informal training between employees. The premise is simple. When an employee needs to know something, they first go to other other employees with the knowledge. Balancing peer to peer (P2P) learning with organizational requirements for certifications and safety is where the traditional LMS feel comes back into play for systems like 360Learning, and there are a lot of them. P2P learning and matching of employees based on behavior, AI, machine learning, self identified needs, input drawn from other systems like performance and feedback management, are all models we see consistently in the field.
If the CLO is in the hot seat for the reskilling and upskilling of the organization, learning tech vendors are in the hot seat to differentiate and map to the future of work. Given the competitiveness and pace of the learning market, we don’t expect to wait another 12 years before we see another mega round for 360Learning.
$13.7 billion was invested globally in work tech through Q3 2021 across 299 deals. WorkTech Market Insiders can access insights and analysis of all of the deals in our Q3 report with a free membership.
Source: 360Learning Blog: This is Not a Fundraising Announcement
