Pixaera raises $5.7 million to empower people through play with its metaverse for professional learning and collaboration

• Pixaera’s app is built to the highest gaming standards with a focus on the global needs of enterprise businesses

• A gaming studio, creating content to the standards of a AAA studio, Pixaera is helping enterprises move from traditional e-learning to highly-engaging 3D game-based learning

• Businesses can access a library of learning experiences, allowing them to use Pixaera’s platform as a one-stop shop to build, deploy and measure immersive experiences at a global scale

• The Seed funding round was led by LocalGlobe, and will be used to expand Pixaera’s team and further develop its platform to address even more learning needs worldwide

Pixaera – the immersive game-based learning platform dubbed ‘Roblox for Enterprise’ – has raised $5.7million in early-stage funding to bring the standard and engagement of high quality games from the world’s best studios to the professional world.

This funding consists of two rounds – $1.2 million of pre-seeding and $4.5 million led by early-stage EMEA investor, LocalGlobe. The founders of FACEIT, the leading competitive gaming platform for online multiplayer games, also participated; as did ERM, a leader in the renewable energy services sector, and York IE.

Built to bring the power, fun and emotion of online games like Roblox and Minecraft to the professional world, Pixaera is helping some of the world’s largest businesses upskill their workforce more effectively and efficiently. By leveraging the growing evidence that shows immersive training and VR are more effective than traditional methods, Pixaera’s  highly-engaging immersive experiences bring a new paradigm to professional development in the workplace.

Closing the learning gap

Pixaera was founded in 2020 by avid gamer and industry veteran Mousa Yassin. Through his time playing the likes of Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft and more, he saw how gaming teaches players vital skills – from problem-solving, to creative thinking, teamwork, and goal-setting- whilst also being incredibly engaging.

“I started to wonder why the gaming industry, being so sophisticated and technologically mature, had not considered building for the corporate and professional world. There was such a gap between how players learn and collaborate organically and fluently in successful games, with the more old-school, unengaging learning experiences we have all been through as employees – even in roles where the stakes are high,” says CEO Mousa.  “Gamers willingly spend hundreds of hours developing their skills while in contrast, companies pay vast sums for online content that has to be forced onto their workforce and fails to truly deliver value.”

Instead of making employees watch long training videos, or attend real-word, often expensive training exercises, Pixaera offers a growing catalogue of experiential VR and PC-based games. Each module is built using Pixaera’s development tools to address global training needs in safety, leadership, mental health and technical topics in a highly scalable way.

Pixaera has begun by addressing large industry standards  that apply to millions of employees yearly. The product is being used by companies including Shell, GE, BP and more. To date, thousands of employees have used Pixaera’s immersive learning games to hone their skills, and 98% of these participants said they prefer Pixaera to any other training in their field.

However, the ambition of founder Mousa Yassin is to provide intuitive and simple tools for all experts, in any field, to build and deploy high-quality immersive 3D experiences as familiar and effective as the worlds of Minecraft and Roblox to a large ecosystem of professionals .

“There is no reason why VR/MR and gaming cannot be the leading tools for professional learning and collaboration across any industry, world-wide; as the technology develops, the applications are endless,” continues Mousa.

Bringing learning into the 21st century

Pixaera is a gaming platform for the professional world. The platform provides a single place to integrate, build, deploy, report and manage a growing list of next-level training simulations from safety to leadership, mental health and more. Once immersed in Pixaera games, via VR or PC, employees learn and hone their skills, and put theoretical training into practice in highly realistic environments. They can rehearse and repeat procedures to perfection.

By mirroring situations they find in their day-to-day job in a highly realistic way, trainees playing Pixaera’s games are also able to trigger real-world emotions. For example, the stressful feeling of being peer-pressured to cut corners, or the anxiety caused by seeing someone in danger because of your actions. It’s the sense of presence and the emotional connection that makes the games so impactful, while the immersive nature lends itself to the way humans interpret and retain information.

Pixaera’s learning platform can be integrated within each client’s learning management system, making it simple for learners to join training sessions and schedule development time. Clients can also cascade training through to a global workforce through a single app experience.

Pixaera’s fundraise comes as there is mounting evidence that learners absorb information and skills more effectively from immersive environments. Research from PWC found learners in immersive environments (such as VR) are 275% more confident in applying their skills. While a separate study by The University of Warwick found that not only does VR learning help people perform better in tests, but it has a positive impact on mood.

A collaborative platform for professionals

Pixaera’s ultimate aim is to to build an ecosystem of high-quality learning games created with the best global experts. Eventually,  companies, topic experts and third party developers will be able to use Pixaera’s platform to develop their own, highly unique experiences. In the same way Roblox and Minecraft empower users to generate and share their own games, which in turn enhances the experiences of all users on these platforms,  Pixaera is building a collaborative platform for professionals.

The funding will be used to expand Pixaera’s leading team of gaming and software developers, and to further advance the product.

Mousa Yassin, founder and CEO said: “We’re going through a transition. Video content is losing market share to interactive 3D worlds . A younger generation has grown up online, as familiar with gaming as with a classroom setting and they know which they prefer. By replicating the fun and absorbing nature of gaming, we can transform how professionals learn and connect with one another  across all sectors and industries, with huge implications for productivity and business success.”

Ziv Reichert, partner at LocalGlobe said: “Our belief is that learning through ‘play’ is vastly more effective than learning through traditional educational formats. Playing is doing, playing is experiencing. The immersiveness of the medium creates real-lasting memories, which, in an educational context, translates directly to knowledge retention, retention that far outweighs that of video or text based learning. It is also fair to say that learning through gaming is significantly more enjoyable and that is not to be underestimated. There is now a whole generation of gamers entering the workforce who have grown up immersed in ‘play’ and will certainly opt to learn that way.”