Townsville-born workplace platform SafetyCulture valued at $2.5b after latest $165m capital raising

The funding round, which will be used to continue SafetyCulture’s push into international markets and accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), was led by Airtree Ventures in the largest initial investment the venture capital firm has ever made. 

SafetyCulture, which services 85,000 businesses and boasts close to two million users, says the fresh capital will also help fund industry-leading innovation for larger enterprise customers and “reward its long-term employees”.

The cloud-based software group also has an ambitious goal of hitting 100 million users by 2032. 

"We have now closed this round and are excited about the opportunities it creates for us to accelerate our growth and help even more customers,” says SafetyCulture founder and CEO Luke Anear.

“It’s a tough environment to be raising in, but we’re proud of the results the business is delivering and pleased that we can continue to create regular liquidity events for early investors and long-term employees.” 

SafetyCulture has reported record growth in sign-ups to its platform with the average size of customers doubling over the past two years.

The company’s growth has been aided by the launch in October last year of a new workplace operations platform, which offers capabilities in training, asset management, sensors and IoT (internet of things) functionality.

SafetyCluture introduced AI-enhanced features to its platform last year, including mobile-first training course creation and instant inspection template generation from prompts, images or files. Anear says he believes AI offers even more potential to change the lives of frontline workers.

Supporting its growth, SafetyCulture has boosted its team by 100 staff over the past six months, taking total employees to 800 operating from its six offices around the world.

“We’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to transforming frontline work,” says Anear.

“Few tech companies have our direct reach to frontline workers across so many different industries, so we have both a responsibility and a massive opportunity to create significant change for these people.

“We’ve built the world's largest repository of workplace data, containing over 5 petabytes of data and billions of images.

“AI is the way we can make sense of that information, and if we can harness it properly, we’ll effectively be able to give frontline teams superpowers that will completely change the way they work.”

Anear, a former private investigator who is said to have seen first-hand the tragedy of workplace incidents, founded SafetyCulture in 2004 with a vision to assist frontline workers.

He established SafetyCuluture in a garage in the northern suburbs of Townville, initially with a team of just three people.

Today, SafetyCulture’s mobile application, iAuditor, is said to be the most widely used auditing app in the world – allowing workers to participate in real-time data collection and reporting in order to quickly recognise and improve workplace safety.

“Having tracked SafetyCulture’s journey to date, now is an opportune time to join them at this inflection point,” says Airtree Venture partner Kell Reilly.

“SafetyCulture has all the hallmarks of Silicon Valley’s tech heavyweights – a compelling vision, product, scale and team. We’re excited to partner with another Aussie success story that’s making waves on the global stage."

Joining Airtree in the latest round are existing investors Blackbird and Morpheus Ventures, while Australian industry superannuation funds Hostplus and HESTA took part in the round via Blackbird.