AI-based workforce training startup Skillmaker has officially closed its seed funding round with $4.5 million in total, an amount officials say is oversubscribed. 

The Carolina Beach-based company plans to use the capital to continue deploying its auto tech training program in partnership with NAPA Auto Care, grow its team and extend its training platform into other trades, according to a news release. 

“Customers and workforce partners keep telling us the same thing: reduce onboarding time, support technicians in the flow of work, and scale capability faster than traditional models can — and that’s exactly what we’re delivering,” said Camden Weis, Skillmaker's founding partner and chief revenue officer, in the release. “The future of work isn’t about replacing the American worker; it’s about equipping them with the tools to thrive. Our vision is to bring that to every trade that keeps this country running.”

Skillmaker’s new investors in the latest round included Potencia Ventures, an impact fund focused on education and workforce development, FullCircle, the NC Tweener Fund, Lee Prevost, Workshop Venture Partners, and NC State’s Wolfpack Investor Network.

Returning investors Idea Fund Partners, Cape Fear Ventures and Lelon Winstead increased their commitments in the company. 

“The buildout underway in energy and data center infrastructure will demand millions of skilled workers this country does not yet have,” said Winstead, former managing partner of The Structure Group, in the release. “Skillmaker’s platform can address exactly that, which is why I keep backing this visionary team.”

Since its founding in 2024, Skillmaker has gained impressive momentum. Founder and CEO Robin Cowie, previously a producer for The Blair Witch Project and video games like Madden NFL, found a connection with NAPA Auto Care when he first moved to the U.S. from South Africa. 

With the concept for an extended reality (XR)- and artificial intelligence-based training program already in the works, a partnership with NAPA Auto Care offered a potential solution to the shortage of trained, skilled auto technicians. 

“Just for technicians alone, we’re short 650,000 technicians today in the automotive space,” Cowie told the Business Journal in April. “And when you extrapolate that out to skilled workers, we really have a very skilled worker challenge in the United States right now.”

Using XR and AI, Skillmaker built an immersive training program that Cowie says can cut the time it takes to train an entry-level auto technician from two years to just 25 days. 

NAPA Auto Care has been a steady partner of Skillmaker since 2024, and the auto company named Skillmaker its Auto Care Strategic Partner of the Year last year. The companies collaborated to create the NAPA Autotech Xccelerator training program, which has been deployed in over 20 states since its first commercial release at an automotive trade show last November, according to the release. The program has a five-year distribution agreement with Genuine Parts Company and NAPA. 

More recently, Skillmaker partnered with Whiteville-based Black’s Tire & Auto Service to offer a pilot employee training program at Southeastern Community College featuring AI-powered smart glasses. According to Cowie, the program will offer direct feedback from technicians on the efficiency of using AI and XR technologies for training. 

“It’s very important to me that whatever we’re doing in this technology, who cares about the technology, is it actually making a difference to that technician?” Cowie said. 

Earlier this year, Skillmaker won a Coastal Entrepreneur Award in the Emerging Company category, an event co-hosted by the Greater Wilmington Business Journal and UNCW’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The company also won the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) Venture Connect pitch contest in the AI and Machine Learning category last year. 

“Overall, looking forward to Wilmington and North Carolina, we’re just one tiny piece of this really big problem,” Cowie told the Business Journal, “and it’s going to take businesses working side by side with community colleges and workforce development to help solve these kinds of problems.”