Guild Education Triples Its Valuation To $3.75 Billion With New $150 Million Raise

One month after the company announced it had opened a million-dollar daycare for employees, Guild Education has announced another milestone. Today the edtech confirmed it closed a $150 million Series E at a $3.75 billion valuation, a significant increase since its last funding round that valued the company at $1 billion in November 2019. Investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Cowboy Ventures, Emerson Collective and more.

The news comes as Denver-based Guild, which builds out education benefits programs for frontline workers, has seen increased demand from industries like retail and restaurants that are struggling to attract workers as the United States reopens. In addition to a surge from existing customers like Chipotle and Walmart, last month Waste Management announced that it would partner with Guild to provide access to more than 170 undergraduate, graduate and trade degrees for 36,000 employees (along with all spouses and children of employees).

“The need for frontline workers is desperate now, but we have to put them on a path to career mobility in the next five years,” explains Guild Education cofounder & CEO Rachel Carlson. “[Education] is a huge differentiator for these employers to be honest about the fact they’re not saying you should come do this frontline job for 40 years; you should come do it for three to five years while getting up-skilled.”

According to Carlson, the pandemic-fueled rapid adoption of automation has made employees realize that they cannot afford to work low-wage jobs that are set to be eliminated in the coming years. As a result, Guild has seen increased demand outside of its traditional undergraduate degree offerings. The programs receiving the most interest are shorter-term trainings in cybersecurity and programming, as well as platform-specific certificates for software like Salesforce and Tableau.

Even before the economic reopening of the US, Guild showed strong growth and flexibility even in a recession. When companies like FedEx were forced to layoff employees, education benefits became a part of severance packages. Guild started 2020 with 450 and now has 940 employees; they plan to hit 1300 employees by the end of 2021, with the engineering and educational coaching teams set to see the largest expansions.

The fresh funding will help fuel that growth and increase product offerings for clients. Carlson also says the late-stage round was an opportunity to expand the portion of the company owned by diverse investors, including existing individuals like Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee and Play Capital’s Ryan Nece. While Cowboy had made significant investments in earlier rounds, Nece took the opportunity to significantly increase his stake in the company.

“Being a minority-led firm with an investor base that is 75% minority [investors], we want to be support companies that we know are going to impact our community,” explains Nece, who founded his firm in 2015. “Our previous check was a toehold token just out of deep respect and appreciation for the company and Rachel. So we wanted to make sure that we could size up and really make one of the most meaningful investments size-wise that we’ve ever made.”

Should Guild head towards an IPO or sale anytime soon, its employees are set to benefit as well. Every single employee, including those staffing its new nursery, are given equity in the company. However, Carlson is remaining tight lipped on whether or not an IPO is on the horizon anytime soon.

“We want to be independently doing what we’re doing for as long as we can,” says Carlson. “For now, we like having a diverse group of impact investors who care about the impact of what we’re doing as much as they care about the returns.”