BOSTON — March 10, 2021 — Just a few months after raising a $1.9 million seed round, Arist — a platform that helps companies, governments, and nonprofits rapidly deliver learning and training via text message-based courses — today announced that its Seed round of funding expanded to $3.9 million in December. The fast-growing startup last raised in October, but, due to rapidly growing demand and unprecedented adoption of text message learning by leading organizations and institutions — including over 20 Fortune 500 companies — investors have committed additional funds to help the company scale even faster.
Global Founders Capital led the additional round, while investors in Arist’s total funding include Acadian Ventures and Craft Ventures, with additional participation from Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Emles Venture Partners, Hack VC, Rebel Fund, Liquid 2 Ventures, and angel investors Derek Schoettle (CEO of Cloudant) and Adam Goldstein (founder of Hipmunk), among others. Founded by Michael Ioffe, Ryan Laverty, and Maxine Anderson, Arist makes learning accessible and frictionless by delivering courses entirely via text message and WhatsApp.
“We are experiencing incredible demand for text message learning in a wide variety of industries,” stated Arist Co-founder and CEO Michael Ioffe. “This additional capital will help us scale operations and expand functionality to support even more use cases. We are so thankful to our investors, team members, and partners for their continued support.”
Arist’s ease of implementation and ability to bridge the digital divide makes it a training tool of choice for more than 20 Fortune 500 organizations, along with dozens of leading nonprofits, universities, and governments, many of whom use Arist to reach learners with limited laptop, LMS, or internet access.
Although the Arist platform was built with corporate learning in mind, innovative entities like the State of California are also utilizing the platform. The state is currently using Arist for its Listos California Emergency Preparedness Campaign, which marks the first time a state has used a text messaging platform to train and educate the general public. The Arist platform is also being utilized by large organizations in technology, logistics, life sciences, manufacturing, and eCommerce for use cases like manager training, diversity and inclusion, onboarding, soft skills training, customer education, and more.
“Arist has had a tremendous amount of growth in a very short period of time,” said David Resnekov of Global Founders Capital. “We couldn’t be more excited for the team, and we are proud to be partners with them in this exciting venture. Arist is definitely a company to watch in 2021.”
Arist Co-founder and CEO Michael Ioffe was recently named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2021, and the company was recently featured in Chief Learning Officer Magazine, where its platform was lauded as a must-have for corporate learning executives.
For more information about Arist and text message learning, please visit Arist.co.
