NEW YORK: Stepful, a training platform that has become the primary pipeline for practice-ready healthcare workers at some of the nation’s largest hospital systems, has raised $55 million in Series C funding, the company announced.
The round was led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from Foresite Capital, Hearst Ventures, and the Citi Impact Fund, as well as existing backers SemperVirens, Y Combinator, Intermountain Health, and ECMC Education Impact Fund. The funding signals strong investor confidence in a startup offering an alternative to both legacy trade schools and costly contract staffing.
Stepful has now graduated more than 32,000 healthcare workers since its founding. The company does not disclose specific revenue figures but said it posted “meaningful revenue growth” over the past year.
The investment comes amid deepening labor shortages across the U.S. health system. Hospitals spent an estimated $97 billion last year on contract staffing—a stopgap measure driven largely by the failure of traditional training pipelines to produce enough credentialed workers quickly.
Legacy trade schools, constrained by enrollment caps and manual workflows, have struggled to keep pace with demand from health systems. Stepful has built a vertically integrated platform that delivers what it calls “school-as-a-service,” replacing low-tech processes with an AI-powered training and intelligence layer. The model offers employer-sponsored, debt-free pathways that allow workers to move from a high school diploma to six-figure healthcare careers without leaving their jobs, commuting to campuses, or taking on loans.
“Stepful is not just a training platform—we are the foundational infrastructure for the future of the healthcare workforce,” Carl Madi, CEO and co-founder, said in a statement. “This capital allows us to expand our partnerships with hospitals and health systems, launch advanced degree programs in nursing, respiratory therapy, and imaging, and accelerate our AI capabilities.”
The company’s proprietary platform integrates instruction, simulation, assessment, and workforce planning. More than 35 major health systems, including Mount Sinai, Ochsner, and Providence, currently use Stepful.
“Stepful is the only company we have seen that combines online education with a sophisticated AI engine to solve the talent supply problem at scale,” said Vig Chandramouli, a partner at Oak HC/FT. “This team has sustained an extraordinary pace of growth.”
With the new funding, Stepful plans to expand into advanced degree programs, including registered nursing and medical imaging, as it moves to establish category leadership in healthcare talent infrastructure.
