Octopus Ventures has led a $7.15m (£5.41m) investment into Jolt, a Silicon Valley co-learning company.
Jolt will use the funding to launch a London campus, with the first Jolt Room set to open by Liverpool Street station in January 2019.
Jolt offers monthly memberships to people who want to acquire or strengthen skills to benefit their careers. Through an app, students can access classes taught by the experts at the likes of Google, LinkedIn, Netflix and Amazon. The tutor will appear via an automatic video conference system.
Roei Deutsch, co-founder and CEO of Jolt, explained the importance of adult learning courses: “Jolt’s mission is to reinvent learning. In the 21st century, learning one subject at university just doesn’t cut it any more. Employees need to be constantly expanding their skills, and Jolt solves this problem with stackable classes that fit around your lifestyle
Online courses, although popular, have a completion rate of 15%. While millennials have an appetite for learning, they also want to learn alongside like-minded people and that’s why we’ve created Jolt: For the community, the networking opportunities and, above all, the experience,” he added.
Jolt was founded in 2015 by Deutsch, Nitzan Cohen Arazi and Nadav Leshem. It currently operates co-learning spaces in the US and Tel Aviv.
Eyal Rabinovich, an early-stage investor at Octopus Ventures, commented on the investment: “Roei and his team get that education can’t stop at a certain age; that lifelong learning provides the intellectual flexibility and professional adaptability needed to seize opportunities in new and dynamic sectors as they emerge.”
“We’re delighted to be supporting Jolt as it brings its campuses to London and look forward to the continued success of the business,” they added.