Axonify Raises US$27 Million To Accelerate Market Leadership With Ground-Breaking Employee Knowledge Platform

Investment from JMI Equity and the BDC IT Venture Fund to fuel Axonify’s continued expansion across market segments

WATERLOO, ON (Nov. 1, 2016)— Axonify, the company behind the world’s first SaaS employee knowledge platform, announced today that it has raised US$27 million in growth equity funding to drive further expansion of its business. The round was led by new investor JMI Equity, a growth equity firm focused on investing in leading software companies, and existing investor BDC Capital through the BDC IT Venture Fund.

Axonify’s all-in-one SaaS platform enables organizations to completely modernize corporate learning to achieve specific business outcomes. By intelligently delivering information to employees in a way that is personalized, convenient, engaging, and designed for long-term knowledge acquisition, “Axonified” organizations see measurable behavior change that gets bottom line results. The company’s microlearning approach has enabled powerhouse brands such as Walmart, Toyota, Bloomingdale’s, and Johnson & Johnson to ensure that their employees have the critical knowledge they need to be top performers in the workplace. Axonify is experiencing record demand for its product and this round of funding will support the company as it moves into the next phase of growth.

“We are absolutely thrilled to have JMI Equity join our investor group and to have the BDC IT Venture Fund affirm its confidence in our business by investing more,” said Carol Leaman, Axonify’s President and CEO. “JMI has a successful track record of supporting high-growth SaaS companies, and we are excited that they believe in the future of Axonify as much as we do. This growth round will allow us to accelerate our pace of customer acquisition, continue to raise our profile in the market, and extend our platform in ways that will blow away the competition.”

“We have been tracking Axonify over the last several years and share in its vision that improved employee knowledge is a critical imperative for enterprises today,” said Matt Emery, a General Partner at JMI Equity. “Customers rave about the ability to drive increased knowledge retention and business outcomes through Axonify’s employee knowledge platform. We look forward to partnering with Carol and her team to help continue Axonify’s market-leading innovation and highly successful customer engagement.”

“Axonify is a tremendous success story and we are looking forward to partnering with JMI in contributing to Axonify’s future growth,” indicated Ron Warburton, a managing partner and the investment lead from the BDC IT Venture Fund.

Organizations across most sectors still struggle to bridge the gap between the formal training employees need on the job and the training they receive currently, relying on outdated learning management systems (LMSs) or incomplete tools that don’t provide full skills acquisition. Early on, Axonify established itself as a leader in the employee knowledge market by developing and marketing a training model that provides meaningful results, while cutting the average cost of training per employee by more than $1,600 annually. These results have helped Axonify secure leading global brands as clients while breaking into new geographical markets across the globe.

About Axonify

Axonify is pushing beyond the boundaries of eLearning with the introduction of the world’s first Employee Knowledge Platform. Powerhouse brands like Walmart, Toyota and Johnson & Johnson are leveraging the Axonify platform to fuel their employees with the knowledge they need to be successful on the job. Built with the fundamentals of brain science, adaptive learning, gamification, microlearning and knowledge-on-demand at its core, the award-winning Axonify Employee Knowledge Platform is proven to encourage employees to take the right actions—ultimately driving business outcomes that increase revenue or decrease expenses. Through its unique analytics and reporting capabilities, Axonify is the only solution that allows organizations to finally tie the impact of employee knowledge to behavior change to bottom line results. Axonify: Fuel your people + power your organization. For more information, visit www.axonify.com.

About JMI Equity

JMI Equity is a growth equity firm focused on investing in leading software companies. Founded in 1992, JMI has invested in over 120 businesses in its target markets, successfully completed over 85 exits, and raised more than $3.0 billion of committed capital. JMI partners with exceptional management teams to help build its companies into industry leaders. For more information, visit www.jmi.com.

About BDC Capital

With more than $2 billion under management, BDC Capital is the investment arm of BDC, serving as a strategic partner to Canada’s most innovative and high potential firms. It offers a range of equity, venture capital and flexible growth and transition capital solutions to help Canadian entrepreneurs scale their businesses into global champions.   To find out more, visit bdc.ca/capital.

For more information, please contact:

Axonify

Laura Martin, VP of Marketing
Axonify Inc.
Email: lmartin(at)axonify.com

Tel: 519-585-1200 x203

JMI Equity

Allyson Vento or Erin Smith

Abernathy MacGregor

Email: amv(at)abmac.com or eks(at)abmac.com

Tel: 212-371-5999

BDC Capital

Maria Constantinescu

Senior Advisor, Media Relations

Email: mediainfo(at)bdc.ca

Tel: 514 496-7146