DataCamp raises $25 million

Thanks to VentureBeat – Data scientists, engineers, and researchers are in demand. According to LinkedIn, as of August 2018 in the U.S., the tech industry is experiencing a shortage exceeding 150,000 of people with data science skills. And with firms like IBM forecasting 28 percent growth in the number of AI- and analytics-related job listings, it’s a virtual certainty that corporate recruitment won’t get any easier in the months ahead.

Short of hiring more data scientists, supplementary education is one way businesses can begin to close the institutional knowledge gap. That’s the mission of New York startup and Techstars graduate DataCamp — cofounder and CEO Jonathan Cornelissen says he hopes to make data skills and data fluency accessible to people around the world. Now, with a platform boasting more than 3.3 million users in over 190 countries and 1,000 business customers, the latter of which include EA, Lego, Airbnb, Forrester, Whole Foods, PayPal, T-Mobile, Telefonica, Kaiser Permanente, HSBC, REI, eBay, Uber, Ikea, and Mercedes-Benz, he and fellow cofounders Dieter De Mesmaeker and Martijn Theuwissen are a lot closer to achieving that goal. A fresh funding round and growth by 100,000 new users every month hasn’t hurt, either.

DataCamp today revealed that it’s raised $25 million in financing led by Spectrum Equity, with participation from Accomplice and Arthur Ventures. Notably, that’s six times the size of DataCamp’s previous $4 million raise in July 2017, and brings the company’s total haul to $31.1 million.

Cornelissen says the funds will allow DataCamp to expand its global reach, broaden its curriculum, and improve the learning experience. It currently has offices in New York, Belgium, and the U.K., and its team of more than 90 people is about evenly split between Europe and the U.S. (Last year, the U.S. team relocated from the Boston area, where Accomplice is based.)