Aussie tech company with KC HQ closes $112M round to scale its global expansion, AI innovation

As global technology company SafetyCulture closes another massive funding round, Kansas City — its largest market and biggest opportunity — stands primed for continued investment at the firm’s U.S. headquarters in the Crossroads Arts District.

SafetyCulture on Tuesday announced a $112 million round — which values the Sydney, Australia-based workforce operations company at $1.7 billion — by Airtree Ventures, alongside existing investors Blackbird and Morpheus Ventures. The capital infusion is expected to help fund industry-leading innovation for larger enterprise customers, accelerate AI adoption, and reward its long-term employees.

SafetyCulture, Crossroads Arts District, Kansas City

It also means growing the Kansas City headcount — particularly for SafetyCulture’s local go-to-market teams — over the next year, following a number of new roles already added to the KC office over the past six months.

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“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,” said Luke Anear, founder and CEO of SafetyCulture. “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.”

The just-announced funding round follows the launch of SafetyCulture’s workplace operations platform in October 2023, which introduced new capabilities in training, asset management, sensors and IoT functionality. With 85,000 businesses and close to 2 million users around the world now using SafetyCulture, customers are continuing to embrace the platform and roll it out to more of their teams.

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

Click here to learn more about SafetyCulture and its solutions for frontline workers.

SafetyCulture has seen record growth in sign-ups, and its average customer has doubled in size over the past two years, according to the company. It has added 100 new roles over the past six months, with more than 800 employees now working from its six offices around the world, to support its accelerating global growth and track towards its ambitious target of reaching 100 million users by 2032.

Luke Anear, SafetyCulture; photo courtesy of SafetyCulture

In 2023, SafetyCulture introduced AI-enhanced features, such as mobile-first training course creation and instant inspection template generation from prompts, images, or files. However, SafetyCulture believes there is still much more potential for AI to change the lives of frontline workers, the company said.

“We’ve built the world’s largest repository of workplace data, containing over five petabytes of data and billions of images,” said Anear. “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.”

Now is an opportune time for Airtree Ventures to join SafetyCulture at an inflection point, said Kell Reilly, partner at the Australian investment firm.

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