STRIVR, the immersive VR training company, announced a $16 million round of financing led by GreatPoint Ventures (GPV) that is said to advance the company’s further expansion into the enterprise market. With this investment, GPV Managing Partner Ray Lane also joined the company’s Board of Directors.
Co-founded by former Stanford Cardinal kicker Derek Belch and Jeremy Bailenson, the founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human interaction Lab, STRIVR first catered to professional and collegiate sports teams, creating immersive training programs to improve athletes’ skills across the NHL, NBA, and NFL.
The latest finance round follows a $5 million seed round struck back in 2016, bringing the company’s total funding to $21 to date.
More recently, the company is known for their work in creating VR training programs for Walmart, which will see a roll-out of over 17,000 Oculus Go headsets coming to US-based Walmart stores.
“In a world rapidly shifting to asset performance and predictive analytics, human capital has been largely ignored with outdated training and development tools,” said Ray Lane, a GPV Managing Partner and now member on STRIVR’s Board of Directors. “STRIVR offers companies like Walmart real-world, immersive experiences utilizing VR to place employees into their actual work environments to be trained, affecting their ability to drive both workforce development and retention.”
The list of enterprise customers includes JetBlue, Fidelity, Tyson Foods and United Rentals. Tyson Foods’ safety/hazard awareness pilot training program, the company has reported more than a 20% reduction in injuries and illnesses compared to the year prior, with 89% of learners saying they felt more prepared after VR training.
To support its expansion, the company has recently opened offices in New York, Seattle, and Nashville, in addition to its existing offices in Los Angeles and Menlo Park.