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Photo credit: kasto / 123RF.
Sydney-based education startup Academy Xi announced today it raised US$1.7 million in a series A round. The round is led by Australia-based investors Perle Ventures and Alium Capital.
Academy Xi teaches courses in design and new technologies, including user experience, virtual reality, and augmented reality. It currently focuses on working with companies to train employees. Ultimately, the startup hopes to be a place for lifetime learning, enabling people to keep their skills current in the digital economy.
According to CEO Ben Wong, the funding will be used to “drive talent development into the corporate and startup ecosystems” in Sydney and Melbourne. It will also help set up the company’s entry into its third Australian city, Brisbane, and its first market abroad, Singapore.
The startup hopes to be a place for lifetime learning.
The founders hope to have 1,300 people fully skilled in the next 12 months and teach around 8,500 students in shorter classes and workshops. By 2020, it hopes to raise that number to 200,000 people, says the startup’s chief experience officer, Charbel Zeaiter.
“We’ve had doctors create medical VR startups, growth marketing students driving interest for their AI fashion advice robots, to students landing their dream job and beginning their UX careers,” Zeaiter says in a statement.
Academy Xi has worked with clients like PwC, Unicef, and Lendlease. Through its relationship with Perle Ventures, it’s also established a partnership with global seed fund Spark Labs, which should see the startup offering training to some of the fund’s portfolio companies.
The startup previously raised a seed round worth US$190,000 from innovation consultancy Vivant and Annie Parker, co-founder of Muru-D and now CEO of startup builder Lighthouse.
As it scales up, it will have to compete against international education-focused companies that cover similar ground, like General Assembly.
We’ve reached out to Academy Xi for more details.
Converted from Australian dollars. US$1 = A$1.32
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