OpenSesame, a company developing workforce education and training software, announced Wednesday it has raised about $28 million from investors.
Portland OR-based OpenSesame says in a news release that it plans to use some of the proceeds from the Series C round to offer more courses and fund sales and marketing of its products.
FTV Capital, a venture fund based in San Francisco, led the investment. Altos Ventures, which led OpenSesame’s previous $9 million funding round three years ago, was the only other participating investor named in the news release. Eight investors participated in the round, according to a document OpenSesame filed with securities regulators disclosing the new funding.
Launched in 2011, OpenSesame has raised about $46 million in outside financing, according to previous funding announcements.
Other education technology companies that have raised large venture capital rounds in recent years include Coursera, Bellevue, WA-based DreamBox, and Examity, of Newton, MA. Austin, TX-based Interplay Learning added a $5.5 million Series A funding round last week, led by S3 Ventures. Interest in the sector has been percolating for years. In 2015, LinkedIn acquired subscription service Lynda.com for $1.5 billion.
OpenSesame says it offers more than 20,000 employee training courses and e-learning modules, which come from hundreds of publishers in the US and other countries, like Pearson and FranklinCovey.
OpenSesame works with its customers to identify courses that teach their employees some of the skills they need to do their work. The company has customers in healthcare, financial services, technology, manufacturing, and other industries. OpenSesame’s roster of clients includes Toshiba Global Commerce and EnerSys (NYSE: [[ticker:ENS]]), a Pennsylvania battery manufacturer.
Many of OpenSesame’s customers have their own learning management platforms. OpenSesame says on its website it can make select courses available through some of these platforms, including ones developed by large enterprise software vendors like Oracle (NYSE: [[ticker:ORCL]]) and SAP (NYSE: [[ticker:SAP]]).
“Enterprises spend over $30 billion annually on external learning content and programs to maintain a highly skilled, competitive workforce,” Chris Winship, partner at FTV Capital, says in a prepared statement. “OpenSesame is capitalizing on key trends that are transforming the workplace,” including cloud computing and the proliferation of mobile devices, he says.
