Israeli employee training video startup Bites reported on Thursday the completion of a $40 million Series A fundraising round, bringing its total fundraising to approximately $55 million since the company's establishment.
The round was led by American venture capital fund PeakSpan Capital, which invests in AI and software growth companies, with the participation of existing investors such as Vertex Ventures, Horizon Capital, Rittenhouse Ventures, and Lyra Ventures. The raised funds are intended, among other things, for expanding the development center in Israel and the continued development of the company's AI engine, and subsequently for increasing sales and customer support teams.
Bites developed an AI platform that turns any procedure, document, or idea in an organization into a training video in the brand's language, uniforms, products, and operational locations. The video arrives directly at each employee's phone, in their language and through channels they already use, such as WhatsApp and Teams, without an app and without login details. According to the company, the knowledge base and Ask-AI generate an accessible personal database for each employee, allowing them to receive any professional information relevant to performing their role at any time via free-language chat.
The engine developed by the company also connects to the organization's sales, customer management, and human resources systems, linking business data with learning data from millions of employee interactions with the videos. Based on this, the company is developing an automated process that identifies a decline in performance in a branch, shift, or with a specific employee, generates focused training for the gap, sends it to the relevant employees, and measures the change in results – for example, in the sales volume of a new promotion.
AI-powered training aims to improve employee performance
The company reports that its customers include Unilever, Coca-Cola, Shake Shack, Wynn Resorts, The Venetian, and Compass Group, alongside customers from the hospitality and retail sectors.
Bites was established in 2020 by Eran Heffetz, who serves as CEO, Tal Nagler-Almog, COO, and Hagai Horowitz, CIO. Heffetz currently also serves as chairman of the public real estate company Anshei Ha'ir and was a partner in establishing and managing several restaurants and bars in Tel Aviv, such as Vicky Cristina, Little Italy, Bread Story, Averbuch, Apartment, and Sublet.
Nagler-Almog managed the psychometric department at Kidum, where she met Horowitz, and together they developed learning materials and tools for learning inside and outside the classroom. The company currently employs 30 workers at its development center in Tel Aviv and headquarters in New York.
Eran Heffetz, co-founder and CEO of Bites: "The company's development stemmed from a personal pain point I experienced when managing restaurants in Tel Aviv, where I saw that business success is determined by what employees actually do and whether they have the knowledge to perform their work in the best possible way, rather than by managers."
Phil Dur, founder and managing partner at PeakSpan Capital: "Most training tools on the market today were designed for desk workers, while Bites was built specifically for deskless workers. In conversations with the company's customers, we heard time and again how well the platform fits their workers and how this translates into increased productivity, which is why sales and operations managers are adopting it quickly. We are excited to partner with the team in the next phase of growth."