Sona, a next-generation and intelligent workforce management platform for frontline enterprises founded by Steffen Wulff Petersen, Oli Johnson, and Ben Dixon, announced a $27.5 million Series A funding round. Felicis led the funding round with participation from Northzone, Gradient (Google’s AI fund), SpeedInvest, Antler, BAG Ventures, and several notable angels participated in the round.
Sona has raised over $40 million to date, and it will use this funding round to expand its go-to-market function and build more advanced AI capabilities on its platform. Last year alone, Sona saw rapid 400%+ revenue growth. So far, over 4.6 million shifts have been created on Sona.
The frontline workforce represents nearly 2 billion people, 56% of the global workforce. But frontline innovations have received less than 1% of VC funding, with 99% of venture investment deployed in technology for white-collar staff. And now the tools and systems provided to frontline enterprises are ineffective and not built for the complexity of frontline workflows. For decades, this innovation lag has led to a poor experience for employees and incorrect deployment of labor, leading to unnecessary costs, suboptimal service, and revenue left on the table.
Since 2020, frontline enterprises faced multiple external headwinds: inflationary forces, demand volatility, and staff shortages. And these businesses already operate with low single-digit margins and labor mismanagement remains the single largest and controllable, cost.
Sona’s exponential growth is driven by the speed of product delivery, high configurability, and sector expertise – which translate into product features specific to the social care and hospitality industries today. Sona’s modern technology was built from the ground up for real-time data processing and insights. Utilizing the Elixir programming language and large language models, Sona offers AI-powered real-time actionable feedback, driving intelligent decision-making leading to workforce productivity gains.
KEY QUOTES:
“With Sona, we’re building the ‘self-driving car’ of running a restaurant or a care home. The last 20 years of workforce management was dominated by legacy point solutions that digitized simple paper processes. Sona is building the next generation of WFM with a truly intelligent platform that enables organizational leaders in complex, multi-location enterprises to put the right people, in the right place, at the right time; and to seamlessly manage their workforce end-to-end.”
– Steffen Wulff Petersen, co-founder of Sona
“It’s great to see Sona provide an industry-leading solution for such a critical area for hospitality. Having been involved with ever-evolving workforce management platforms for nearly ten years, the results seen with Sona are impressive – from smart AI-enabled dynamic forecasting to auto-scheduling and, importantly, employee preferences and a slick ‘consumer grade’ app for ease of use. Quite rightly, hospitality businesses are driving productivity and efficiency while building customer service – Sona has demonstrated the ability to help grow sales and optimise staffing.”
– David Campbell, tenured executive (Chairman, CEO) of numerous hospitality businesses (including wagamama, PizzaExpress, The Ivy Collection, Bill’s Restaurants, Ole & Steen) and industry employee initiative Hospitality Rising
“We are proud to lead Sona’s Series A round and support its mission to empower frontline enterprises with cutting-edge workforce management solutions. We believe in Sona’s potential to redefine how businesses in sectors like social care, restaurants, and hospitality manage their workforce, and we’re excited to be part of their journey towards reshaping the future of work. Ben, Oli, Steffen and the Sona team have already helped over 100,000 frontline workers schedule shifts, and we know so many more will appreciate smarter software that enables their work.”
– Niki Pezeshki, General Partner at Felicis
