Talespin gets $20M Series C funding to enable learning in the metaverse

The metaverse has definitely caught the world by storm. Since Facebook rebranded itself to Meta, billions of dollars have been pouring into the space as investors and venture capital firms look to cash in on the next big thing.

Metaverse is a digital world where the real and virtual worlds converge into a vision of science fiction. You can also think of the metaverse as a virtual world where millions of people could gather to work, play, and socialize in immersive virtual environments and communicate across shared spaces across different platforms. From gaming to medicine, the metaverse has the potential to transform our ways of life.

The metaverse also has another potential including the opportunities to leverage the technology in the areas of education and learning. The metaverse could be used to connect students, educators, and learners from all around the world and empower them to interact in meaningful ways.

Today, the workforce and workplace have experienced historic disruption globally, as ‘the Great Resignation,’ digitalization, and remote work changed the way businesses operate – and how individuals approach their careers. Simultaneous to workforce disruption, the ‘metaverse‘ and “web 3.0,” which are a host of new technologies designed to make the internet more immersive and decentralized, are transforming industries ranging from finance to remote collaboration and education.

One of the leading companies utilizing the metaverse for learning is Talespin, a Los Angeles-based spatial computing tech startup focused on workforce talent development and skills mobility. The startup is building a future of work where the distance between learning and execution is collapsed, enabling people to explore unique career paths that meet the needs of both businesses and individuals.

To bring its vision for learning in the metaverse to reality, Talespin announced today it raised $20 million in Series C funding co-led by SEEK Investments and Allomer Capital, with participation from additional investors, including Pearson Ventures, Accenture Ventures, Go1, and Sony Innovation Fund.

Talespin’s new funding comes on the heels of rapid momentum for the company, as solutions to better train and reskill the workforce are in high demand, and the world’s top organizations explore use cases for the metaverse. In recent months, the company has onboarded several new enterprise customers and members of its partner program, including Accenture and Go1, with further collaboration and commercial partnerships to be announced later in 2022.

Founded in 2015 by CEO Kyle Jackson, Talespin is building a spatial computing platform to power talent development and skills mobility for the future of work. The startup leverages its proprietary platform to offer enterprise customers, partners, and individuals an end-to-end solution for creating, distributing, and measuring the impact of immersive learning content. Its platform also supports an ecosystem of learning content creators, leading learning platforms, XR hardware partners, and enterprise customers.

Since its inception seven years ago, Talespin has developed a platform to power the creation and distribution of immersive learning experiences. It includes CoPilot Designer, an authoring tool that puts the power of immersive content creation in the hands of learning and instructional designers.

Its technology uses 3D virtual humans and environments to help people practice conversational skills and simulate jobs with real-time feedback and skills analytics. Tailspin platform is used by organizations like Accenture, AIA Hong Kong & Macau, Farmers Insurance®, JFF, and 10 of the largest employers in the Fortune 500, the Talespin platform is proven to deliver accelerated learning, higher employee engagement, and more impactful upskilling and reskilling programs.

“The first step to creating an immersive learning ecosystem was to change the skills profile and resources required to create content. Before CoPilot Designer, this took hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a team of developers – Immersive learning simulations can now be created in a matter of days by learning designers and other professionals in the business,” said Kyle Jackson, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Talespin. “Our new funding and investor relationships will help us further scale this platform, and realize our broader company vision for learning in the metaverse.”

The term metaverse, short for “meta-universe,” was originally coined by Neal Stephenson in the dystopian novel “Snow Crash” three decades ago. In the book, Stephenson describes the metaverse as a three-dimensional virtual reality generated by goggles worn by the novel’s hero, Hiro.