NextWork Raises $4.45M for AI Skill Checks
Startup NextWork has secured $4.45M in a seed round to accelerate its AI-powered skill verification platform. The funding highlights a growing market for tools that automate how companies assess technical abilities as AI becomes standard in recruiting.
The latest funding round for NextWork was led by Shakti VC, with notable participation from Cake Ventures. The round also saw repeat investments from GD1 VC, Blackbird Ventures, Icehouse Ventures, and Phase One Ventures, signaling strong continued confidence from early backers. This brings the total raised by the startup to over $6.7 million, including a prior $2.3 million pre-seed round. The fresh capital is earmarked for an aggressive expansion into the United States, with the company establishing its U.S. headquarters in Austin, Texas. This move is a strategic effort to be closer to its largest and fastest-growing user base. The investment will also fuel further engineering development and hiring to scale the platform's adoption among learners and employers. Founded by CEO Amber Winton (formerly Joseph), NextWork has pivoted from a broader vocational training platform to focus specifically on the high-demand area of AI skills. This shift addresses the growing gap between traditional credentials and the practical, demonstrable abilities required in an AI-driven workforce. Winton's vision is to move hiring and learning away from inferred qualifications to a system based on proven, outcome-based evidence of skills. Since its launch in 2024, NextWork's platform has attracted over 190,000 users from more than 190 countries. The platform enables users to build tangible AI projects, such as chatbots and automated workflows, which then form a public, proof-of-work portfolio that employers can use to verify capabilities. This model aims to create a new, trusted infrastructure for talent assessment in the AI era.
