Modal (a leading skills development platform for data and analytics professionals) announced a $25 million Series A funding round led by Left Lane Capital and Ensemble VC with participation from leading investment firms Signalfire and Learn Capital.
This funding round is a testament to Modal’s product, which consistently achieves 75% graduation rates and the high demand for AI skills across enterprises.
Modal was launched by Darren Shimkus and Dennis Yang, the former President and CEO of Udemy, respectively. They scaled Udemy through many years of growth through an IPO and brought deep educational technology experience to their new company.
The co-founders had started Modal to help employers reliably upskill their employees through personalized technical and AI skills training. Now, Modal’s learning platform utilizes 1:1 expert coaching and job-simulated projects to drive education for those who work with data.
Modal redefines how companies address skill enhancement by abandoning unlimited subscriptions with low utilization and instead offering a success-based pricing model where companies only pay for the skills employees develop. This new model enables companies to purchase credits only consumed when learners graduate from the course and pass a rigorous capstone project.
The company has shown a lot of momentum over the last year, growing its customer base to over 100 large enterprises, including Dentaquest and Casey’s. The fastest-growing segments are GenAI training and utilizing AI to improve productivity. Across all subjects, learners enrolled in Modal’s training programs are 15x more engaged than the industry average, and on-the-job projects regularly attain course completions above 80%.
Modal added that it plans to use the funding to enhance its platform, expand its go-to-market capabilities, and recruit top-tier talent. And Modal also just recently launched Organizational Development Plans [ODP], designed to help companies connect their goals to specific skills their teams need.
This program is meant to drive company objectives, such as improving the business impact of data work or accelerating the organization’s overall transformation to be more data-driven.
KEY QUOTES:
“Having been in the industry for two decades, I’ve seen how organizations spend their money offering subscriptions to all their employees, but only 2-3 percent of those employees would complete a course. At Modal, we only charge companies when employees actually graduate, demonstrating their new skills. We’re not interested in making money on breakage, we want to drive results.”
– Darren Shimkus, Modal CEO
“There is no more qualified team in this market. It’s time we graduate from unused assessments and archaic content to truly engaging, relevant and effective upskilling.”
– Vinny Pujji, Managing Partner at Left Lane Capital
“The results of our partnership with Modal have been incredible. Their tailored approach has accelerated analytical literacy within the organization, allowing for the immediate adoption of capabilities and applicability to solve real business use cases and objectives.”
– Brett Ellerbroek, head of Casey’s Analytics Center of Excellence
