SafetyCulture raises $34 million while planning a $500 million VC share sale

SafetyCulture has announced a fresh $34 million in funding, pumping the Australian unicorn’s valuation up to $2.7 billion. But despite the fresh cash injection, it is also looking to recoup $500 million worth of shares from early investors in 2024.

The funding round was led by Morpheus Ventures and Marbruck Investments, which were joined by Index Ventures.

The AFR had the drop on this one, reporting that OH&S startup clocked $132 million in revenue in the last financial year, which was a 32% uptick on the previous year.

SafeyCulture’s founder and CEO Luke Anear confirmed the latest raise closed in July. Like many in the startup ecosystem, the company shifted towards profitability due to global economic turmoil and a dryer investment pool. Speaking to SmartCompany earlier this year, Anear said this strategy would give the business an “infinite runway” to not only carry on current operations, but cherry-pick the staff it wanted.

However, Anear has now indicated that SafetyCulture is doing an about-turn, focusing once again on the growth of the business. Part of this will include pushing into the insurance space, having just bought out its insurance partner QBE. This offering was underwritten by Allianz.

Interestingly, SafetyCulture also has some sales in the pipe next year, leading with $500 million worth of shares from early-stage investors such as Blackbird Ventures and Index Ventures — both of which have been invested for around ten years.

It’s our understanding that $500 million is currently just an estimate and there may be plans for a secondary sale for investors who have been with the company between seven and 10 years.

One of the benefits of sales like this is the ability for startups to offer larger funding opportunities to overseas investors thanks to the freed up equity. In the case of SafetyCulture, it has only ever been able to offer $30 – $40 million at a time. This could perhaps mean we’ll see larger investors from the US take a stake in SafetyCulture over the next few years.

Liquidity moves like this can also help curb pressures from investors to IPO. We saw a similar occurrence with Canva last week, with Blackbird selling off $150 million of shares it had held since 2015.

Not having to go public means that a company like SafetyCulture can instead focus on product building and capturing more customers.

SafetyCulture is also planning a second sale of shares from its employees, but the dollar amount on that is currently unclear. However, Anear did say that he expects it to be above $8 million — the amount a previous employee share sale reached — due to the current economic climate.

SmartCompany has contacted SafetyCulture for comment.