Sana Labs, a Swedish startup that uses AI to personalise online training for professionals, has landed a $55 million investment at a valuation of $500 million. Led by NEA (recently backed Outrider), the round saw participation from Menlo Ventures and other investors. With this, the total funding raised by Sana accounts for $137 million, including the $28 million Series B round raised last year.
The startup will use the new investment to fuel its global go-to-market expansion and accelerate both its AI and experience design R&D.
Launches new AI features
In addition to the investment, Sana Labs has announced new features for organisations to build custom AI agents for any team or workflow, with no coding required. Powered by its state-of-the-art RAG and its agent solution A-4, these agents will collaborate to solve complex multi-step problems, complete tasks in other apps, and self-critique their output until they’ve resolved the task at hand.
It has also launched a next-generation enterprise search with enhanced ranking across structured and unstructured data, a revamped UI to make creating and interacting with expert AI assistants even easier, and the ability to generate AI avatars from company training and documentation to make knowledge more digestible and engaging.
Acquisition of workflow automation startup
Besides these, Sana Labs has acquired CTRL as it continues building the ultimate user interface for AI in the enterprise. The AI workflow automation startup is backed by LocalGlobe and Earlybird and trusted by Stripe, Airtable, and Snowflake.
The Swedish company also welcomed Designer Erik Olmers from Apple and ex-Google AI researcher Oscar Täckström as Chief Scientist.
Redefines workplace training with AI
Founded in 2016 by entrepreneur and AI specialist Joel Hellermark, the startup’s mission is to advance how humans access knowledge with AI. The company first emerged as an AI-powered learning and knowledge platform before introducing its enterprise assistant. Now, Sana’s AI products allow you to index knowledge from all your apps, create new knowledge, and access everything your company knows through search and chat.
The company has seen surging demand as companies race to deploy generative AI. Since launching the Free tier of its assistant in April 2024, which spurred the creation of 100,000 new workspaces in six months, Sana is now introducing a Team tier so smaller organisations can benefit from enterprise-grade AI capabilities.
“The UI for AI will go from assistants, to proactive agents, to becoming invisible,” said Sana founder Joel Hellermark. “With Sana, we’re taking the first step as companies can now build AI agents that do everything from filling out RFPs and updating sales opportunities in Salesforce based on call notes to answering a myriad of questions about clinical trials. We can’t wait to put these advances into the hands of the next billion AI users.”
Growing need for AI in workplace training
Corporate training has long been a challenging arena, with companies often struggling to deliver learning that’s both relevant and engaging for employees. Traditional training methods, including classroom-style sessions and one-size-fits-all e-learning platforms, often fail to address the unique needs of diverse workforces. Studies have shown that traditional corporate training can suffer from low retention and engagement rates, which limits the effectiveness of training initiatives. In response, many organisations are looking toward AI-driven solutions like Sana to adapt training to the specific needs and learning styles of each employee, increasing both retention and real-world applicability.
With AI, Sana Labs offers a more personalised approach to workplace training by analysing user data to tailor learning experiences in real-time. This AI-driven personalisation is not only designed to improve individual learning outcomes but also addresses a major efficiency challenge faced by companies with large or diverse teams, especially as they scale.
As Sana expands, it’s likely to face competition from other AI-driven learning platforms, but the startup’s early success and focus on workplace training put it in a strong position to capture a growing share of the market. As AI becomes more embedded in workplace systems, tools like Sana’s that offer both adaptability and scalability are likely to become integral components of corporate training strategies.
With its approach, the company is not only addressing the immediate needs of companies but also paving the way for a future where training can be as dynamic and responsive as the workplace itself.
How does it help customers?
Existing customers, including Merck, Hinge Health, Electrolux, and Svea Solar are using Sana and have reported 95% time savings from finding complex product information and up to 90% productivity gains from automating complex workflows for Industrial companies. They have also witnessed over 60% in time savings from automating legal admin, 200% increased efficiency for Legal firms, and over 10 hours/week of time savings in new hire onboarding for internal HR teams.
“We’ve seen countless powerful use cases and areas of efficiency since deploying Sana to our company of 1,500 employees across 20 countries,” said Peter Laurin, CEO at industrial technology market leader Piab. “We’re leveraging our AI assistants to find and compare product information, build sales arguments, support R&D, and much more. We see real operational efficiency, and Sana has already provided us with a quick payback.”
“The most powerful large language models have sparked a once-in-a-lifetime revolution, but they are only as good as the context we give them,” said Philip Chopin, Managing Director, NEA UK. “Organisations need a way to connect these LLMs to vast knowledge repositories and curate their knowledge base in real-time. Sana is doing exactly that, and we believe it’s proving to be a game-changer for enterprises.”
“Sana gives us full control and customisation over the AI,” said Peter Jidesjö, Executive Vice President at healthcare solution provider Permobil. “We decide what it has access to, we choose the parameters, and we can tailor it to meet our specific needs for accuracy and quality. Within a few days we were all set up and ready to go. We’ve already seen 15-20% time savings in resolving some of our tech support cases for our customers.”
The post Sana hits $500M valuation with $55M raise: How this Swedish startup wants to change workplace training with AI appeared first on Tech Funding News.