Quick take:
- The new funding values Gemba at $60 million.
- The funding round was led by Parkway Venture Capital.
- Gemba’s proprietary VR offering helps global enterprises train their workforce through highly immersive learning programs.
Virtual reality corporate training platform, Gemba, has secured $18 million in Series A funding at a $60 million valuation in a round led by Parkway Venture Capital.
The fresh injection of funds will be used to expand Gemba’s growth in the EMEA region as well as its push into the North American market.
Through its proprietary virtual reality as a service offering in the corporate training space, Gemba helps global enterprises seeking to train distributed workforces across multiple sites through highly immersive learning programs, simulated factory walks, and live training events. The platform’s VR programs are currently only compatible with Meta’s Quest VR headset, but plans to expand to other VR devices.
Gemba grew out of executive training company The Leadership Network, founded in 2013 by CEO Nathan Robinson and Chairman Victor Lewis. The company now counts global giants including Nike, Pfizer, Amazon and many others, as its partners. Gemba’s platform offers masterclasses on supply chain, enterprise excellence, innovation excellence and more, delivered in VR by industry experts.
“Gemba is set to change the way global organizations train their workforces across all critical learning and development areas – from interactive, on-the-job skills training and safety all the way to leadership training,” said Gregg Hill, co-founder and general partner at Parkway Venture Capital.
Following the funding round, Parkway Venture Capital’s co-founders and general partners Gregg Hill and Jesse Coors-Blankenship will join Gemba’s board of directors. Parkway’s investment will accelerate the development of the platform, enabling people and companies to access Gemba on a subscription basis.
The platform’s services do not come cheap. Lessons cost up to $7,250 per program while annual enterprise subscriptions start at $120,000 for a 50-person team.
Gemba also offers colocation services, adaptable mixed reality spaces, AI-powered consultants, and a secure and customisable version for enterprise use at scale, enabling global companies to give global workforces access to training, inspiration, coaching and events from any location.
VR and the metaverse have seen their ups and downs over the past year. Meta’s Reality Labs suffered a $3.7 billion loss in Q3 2022, while Microsoft made headlines this week as it laid off several of its VR and XR teams and sunsets its social VR platform, Altspace. However, Microsoft’s remaining VR team will work on the Mesh for Microsoft Teams mixed reality overlay, which will bring Office 365 apps to Meta’s Horizon Worlds.
While social VR has yet to pick up the pace, it appears that virtual reality for enterprises is showing some promise as a use case as investors pour capital into it in Gemba’s case, while Microsoft shifts its focus to developing its VR platform for enterprises.
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