Sep 27, 2023

Cognota (formerly Synapse) – a LearnOps platform that facilitates corporate learning and development teams to manage end-to-end operations and measure ROI – announced today the closing of $5.5 million USD in Series A funding. This funding round was led by Grotech Ventures with participation from IDEA Fund Partners, BDC Capital, Generation Ventures, CEAS Investments, Tyton Partners and notable investors Neal Dempsey and Jay Steinfeld. Cognota also received $1.9 million from FedDev Ontario earlier this year. And the funding will be used to meet accelerating demand from enterprise customers, drive product development, and launch the world’s first LearnOps certification program to its community members, free of charge. Measuring return on investment in the business landscape is essential for L&D leaders looking to highlight the value and tangible impact of investments with business objectives. And in an industry that annually spends a staggering $320 billion, these endeavors have transitioned from being optional to becoming necessary for every L&D team. Cognota’s edge platform facilitates this process by integrating workflows such as intake and program management with budget and resource allocation data and then utilizes analytics to help customers make better decisions. By tapping into these capabilities, learning teams can foster a culture of accountability and drive better business outcomes. Cognota focuses on the most important task for Learning Leaders and CLOs – which streamlines the process of managing learning priorities and resources with its purpose-built operating system. And it recently launched partnerships with workplace software providers like Schoox, ROI Institute, Bluewater Learning, and Infopro Learning to offer more innovative solutions to L&D teams. KEY QUOTES: “Raising Series A in the current environment is not easy for a startup. The ability to close this round as an up round with no liquidity preferences validates the value Cognota is driving in defining and leading the LearnOps category. Learning and development is increasingly a driver for performance and our platform provides the essential infrastructure for organizations to save time, increase output, and measure impact. Our vision is to power learning operations for all enterprises globally.” — Cognota CEO Ryan Austin “With Cognota, what used to take months can now be done in days. Cognota customers report seeing the time it takes to respond to training requests cut down by 90%, in addition to the time it takes to manage learning projects down by 70%, and at half the cost of current disparate processes.” — Steve Fredrick, General Partner at Grotech Ventures Trending on Pulse 2.0