Seattle’s Yoodli secures $40 million to expand AI learning, strengthen team

Existing US-based investors Neotribe and Madrona also participated in the round. This is the startup’s second funding this year. It raised $13.7 million in a Series A round led by Neotribe in May.

The company will use the new funds mainly to support its AI coaching, analytics and personalization capabilities. The Seattle-based startup will also expand its products, artificial intelligence (AI) research and customer success teams with the new funds.

“This round helps us scale our team and serve more businesses on a true end-to-end experiential learning platform,” Varun Puri, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Yoodli, said in a prepared statement. he said. “We’re reducing the time it takes to acquire real skills, ensuring employees are ready for play time, and saving organizations countless hours lost to passive coaching. The future of learning isn’t about consuming content; it’s about adaptable, real-world applications that drive behavior change.”

Modeling itself as an AI “role-playing” company, Yoodli acts as a communications coach, helping people become more confident in public speaking, sitting for interviews, and even acting as salespeople. The startup uses an AI bot to design real-world scenarios in which people can train and then provide them with feedback they can use to improve their communication skills.

It also moves deeper into the enterprise market, where Yoodli’s bot is used to help internal professional development, learning and go-to-market teams sell with confidence. The company counts many technology companies such as Google, Databricks and Snowflake among its customers, sales training and development company Sandler Sales, as well as artificial intelligence cloud communications company RingCentral.

This is WestBridge Capital’s fifth AI investment so far this year. In October, the firm led UnifyApps’ $50 million Series B round. That same month, it also led a $16 million round for English language learning startup SpeakX, with participation from Elevation Capital and Goodwater Capital.

In April, WestBridge led a $60 million round in Tessel, an AI database platform as a service, in which Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated. Other deals include $40 million in Finbox for AI-powered credit infrastructure and participation in Nexthop AI’s $110 million round led by Lightspeed.

In a conversation we had before MintWestBridge partner Rishit Desai, who oversees investments related to AI and software as a service, said Indian AI startups will see much more growth-stage funding in the next 4-12 months. WestBridge is a global investment firm with $7 billion in assets under management and has backed many companies, including ride-hailing unicorn Rapido, recently listed edtech giant Physics Wallah, insurance company Star Health, and collaboration solutions company IndiQube, which went public in July this year.

Yoodli’s first round of funding came from Madrona and Cercano Management, which wrote the company a $6 million seed check in 2021. With the new financing round, the company raised a total of $60 million.