Opus – a training platform for businesses with a deskless workforce – announced recently that it closed $6.8 million in a Series A funding round led by Stage 2 Capital. Existing investors including Gutter Capital, NextView Ventures, and Bling Capital participated in this funding round.
This funding round comes on the heels of a $2 million round less than a year ago led by Gutter Capital with participation from Chelsea Clinton’s Metrodora. And this Series A funding round will help Opus confront the frontline worker shortage via the same AI technology that the majority of software companies are leveraging for desk workers. It will also accelerate Opus’ growth, including expanding the engineering and go-to-market teams, further developing the SaaS platform, and integrating into new industries.
Businesses in the US currently employ a total of 110 million deskless workers who make up about 70% of the overall workforce, but they lack access to technology to help them do their jobs better. And there are reportedly 1,200 learning management systems, “LMS” on the market, but only 30% of businesses with deskless workers have invested in one. More than 70% of Opus customers are switching from no software at all such as Shipley Donuts, & Pizza, and Salt & Straw. And since 2021, employers have seen record-high voluntary turnover rates, contributing to the post-pandemic labor shortage. Businesses are now investing in new software like Opus to deliver training throughout the employee lifecycle in order to increase employee output and retention while lowering labor costs.
Opus was designed to help businesses with a large distributed workforce minimize labor costs and increase sales by offering accessible training technology that can reach 99% of employees. And general learning management systems only reach 1 in 5 employees due to being desktop-based, English-only, and burdensome to field managers. Plus Opus automates every part of the employee training lifecycle in a single system and delivers all forms of training to employees’ phones through a mobile application that is available in more than 100 languages.
Opus is utilizing AI through their translation technology and content builder. And the content builder helps customers take any content, such as a procedure change, and convert it into an interactive lesson 20 times faster than legacy solutions. As a result their customers are seeing a decrease in manager admin time by 40% while lowering frontline labor costs by 5%-15%. Plus Opus translation technology helps reduce operating costs by automatically translating every course, message and interaction on the platform into over 100 global languages. By utilizing neural networks for automated translations and a proprietary machine learning model which understands the quality of the translations the system produces, Opus achieves 95-99% accuracy.
Since launching in early 2020, Opus built a customer portfolio of top food service brands including Taim, Kevin Hart’s Hart House, Just Salad, Luke’s Lobster, Swingers Golf, Gregorys Coffee, Vanderbilt University, and Rhode Island School of Design. Along with welcoming Mandy Cole, Partner of Stage 2 Capital, as a Board Director, Opus expanded its executive team with Doug Freeman as the Chief Revenue Officer, coming from Remesh, The Muse, and Living Social, Frances Liu as VP of Marketing, coming from Instawork and Upwork, and Opus’ Co-founder Jeffrey Silver was appointed as Chief Technology Officer and Board Director.
KEY QUOTES:
“Training technology is not accessible to the majority of American workers, but we’re changing that. In today’s labor market, Opus is an essential tool for businesses with frontline workers. We’re building a world where employers are not just checking a box, they are getting frontline business intelligence so they can make better decisions about their majority workforce. What’s next in the world of work is new knowledge, new growth and creating space for everyone. We’re thrilled to partner with Stage 2 on our next chapter.”
— Rachael Nemeth, co-founder and CEO at Opus
“The deskless workforce, those that work in restaurants, manufacturing, logistics, and facilities, are the foundation of our economy. It’s imperative that the businesses who employ these people deliver effective training that is accessible and leads to better workplaces. We invested in Opus because the company is trailblazing a training solution for any business with a frontline workforce – something that is lacking in the current market. And, we’re excited to join their Board of Directors to help the team scale and make an impact in today’s working world.”
— Mandy Cole, Partner of Stage 2 Capital
