Denmark-based virtual laboratory technology developer Labster secured $60m on Wednesday in a series C round that included Swisscom Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of telecommunications firm Swisscom.
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led the round, which also featured GGV Capital, Owl Ventures, Balderton Capital, Northzone, EduCapital and David Helgason, founder of video game software provider Unity Technologies.
Labster provides software that allows users to create interactive simulations that can replicate experiments in a live laboratory. It has customers in 70 countries and is looking to grow its engineering, product, sales and customer success teams as it prepares to expand into South America.
Michael Bodekaer Jensen, Labster’s co-founder and CEO, said: “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.
“This round of funding will allow us to accelerate our global expansion and development of new science courses so we can help millions more students.”
The round boosted Labster’s overall funding to $104m and represented a significant increase in valuation from August 2020, when it secured $9m from GGV Capital, Owl Ventures, Balderton and Northzone, Bodekaer Jensen told TechCrunch this week.
Swisscom Ventures first invested in the company through a $21m series B round in April 2019 that was led by Owl Ventures and backed by existing investors Balderton Capital, Northzone, Nordic Makers, EduCapital, Entangled Group and David Helgason.
