Labster Secures $60M in Series C Funding
Boston: Labster, the award-winning producer of virtual laboratory simulations, today announced it raised $60 million in Series C funding. The round was led by new investor Andreessen Horowitz, joined by existing investors GGV Capital, Owl Ventures, Balderton Capital, David Helgason, founder of Unity Technologies, Northzone, Swisscom Ventures, and EduCapital. The round brings Labster’s total capital raised to $100 million.
Named one of Newsweek’s 50 U.S. Businesses That Stood Out During the Pandemic, Labster’s core team of 200 employees supports over 2,000 universities and high-schools, tens of thousands of courses, and millions of students who use Labster. The latest round of capital will enable Labster to focus on growing the size of its global team to serve students around the world.
“One of the biggest questions we asked ourselves throughout 2020 was how we could help improve learning outcomes and dramatically increase the motivation of the many students forced to learn from home,” said Michael Bodekaer Jensen, Founder & CEO of Labster. “This round of funding will allow us to accelerate our global expansion and development of new science courses so we can help millions of more students.”
Mads Bonde, Founder, and Chairman of Labster cited the company’s unique learning product as the reason for its growth. “The pandemic has clearly shown that a lot of ed-tech fails because it merely brings old teaching methods online, without tapping into the many technological possibilities that are leveraged for consumer apps and games. Students are bored and we’re losing out on the potential for so many future scientists,” said Bonde. “Labster’s game-based platform makes learning addictive. Our approach stimulates students’ natural curiosity and attains much higher learning outcomes. In the future, we will see new scientists, healthcare professionals, and science-literate adults who were first trained in a Labster simulation.”
Labster is growing its core offerings to meet the needs of educators and students who are determined to continue learning without interruption due to the pandemic or the many other barriers to education. They are exploring additional ways to extend their award-winning virtual lab platform to students of all backgrounds, including those who may not have laptops or broadband Internet service. In the future, some students may use mobile devices to access Labster’s high-quality virtual lab simulations.
Labster’s focus continues to be on supporting instructors as they empower their students to become the next generation of scientists to change the world. Labster simulations have proven to be a complementary learning tool for in-person university and high school education and have also been an essential resource to many hybrid and online courses.
