CHICAGO, IL – January 26, 2022 (GlobeNewswire) – Certiverse, the first-of-its-kind online exam development system, today announced a new $2 million seed acceleration financing round. The growth financing includes a new investment by Zeal Capital Partners, a venture capital firm dedicated to narrowing the wealth and skills gaps by investing in early-stage tech-enabled businesses, with follow-on participation from existing investors Hyde Park Venture Partners, Angeles Investors and Hunt Holdings, LP.
Certiverse’s unique AI-guided platform coaches subject matter experts as they contribute asynchronously to leading industry exams and automates many of the manual processes involved in test development. Designed pre-pandemic, the system has quickly gained interest for offering a solution to many new challenges faced by certification test sponsors: limitations on travel and gatherings, rapidly evolving technologies, and the environmental impact of bringing global groups together. The move toward democratizing learning, with a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, is also fueling the need for the company’s all-in-one online system. Certiverse allows contributors to build exam content from anywhere in the world, on their own schedules, and enables lower test fees and access to more exams.
Founded in 2019, Certiverse launched its first live exam with The Linux Foundation in late 2020. This new entry-level certification in the IT space was developed in 12 weeks – roughly one third of the traditional time frame – without upfront content-creation costs. This demonstrated speed and lower test development expense helped the company earn the IT Certification Council’s Innovation Award in 2021 and attracted multiple new clients to Certiverse.
Building on this momentum, the new capital will be primarily targeted toward accelerating the development of planned product features to meet the needs of Certiverse’s growing client base and raising the system’s visibility in the testing market.
Zeal Capital Partners’ interest in Certiverse was spurred by its positioning to address the Future of Work and create equitable access to career opportunities, as well as the commitment to diversity and environmental responsibility within the Latinx-founded IT start-up.
"The innovation Certiverse brings to the credentialing process is already lowering barriers for aspiring professionals across industries," says Nasir Qadree, founder and managing partner of Zeal Capital Partners. “We’re excited to partner with Ruben and the entire Certiverse team as they continue to transform the way knowledge and competency skills are validated.”
“It’s an honor to welcome Zeal Capital Partners' as an investor. Their recognition of our positive impact is a fulfillment of our core mission,” said Ruben Arturo Garcia. “To us, transforming testing is ultimately about changing the lives of learners for the better. Our partners in this round are allowing us to do that on a greater scale in a shorter time period.”