Bites, a New York and Tel Aviv company whose software turns a business's procedures into short training videos for frontline staff, has raised a $40 million Series A led by PeakSpan Capital, it announced on October 29. Existing investors Vertex Ventures, Horizon Capital, Rittenhouse Ventures and Lyra Ventures joined the round, which takes Bites' total funding to $55 million.
The round is eight times the $5 million seed round Bites announced in October 2021, and 73% of all the money it has raised, by SaasBuzz's calculation. It also puts PeakSpan co-founder Phil Dur on the board of a second company that delivers workplace training through messaging apps: he is listed as a director of Arist in that company's Form D filed July 27, 2026.
What Bites sells
Bites sends lessons, each up to 90 seconds, through WhatsApp, SMS, Microsoft Teams, Slack or a plain link, so a line cook or a hotel clerk needs no app and no login. A tool the company calls AI Studio turns a PDF or a standard operating procedure into a branded video, and the company said one video can switch between more than 150 languages.
The release names Unilever, Coca-Cola, Shake Shack, Wynn Resorts, The Venetian and Compass Group as customers. Bites said its customers typically reach more than 90% engagement within three weeks and that its net revenue retention is 161%, figures it did not break down. It gave no revenue figure.
Bites was founded in 2020 by Eran Heffetz, its chief executive, Tal Nagler Almog, its chief operating officer, and Hagai Horovitz, whom the release lists as CLO. It employs 30 people in Tel Aviv and New York, The Jerusalem Post reported.
What PeakSpan says it bought
Dur and PeakSpan's Charlie Reinkemeyer join the Bites board. In the release, Dur said the firm's case rests on fit:
PeakSpan's thesis rests on Bites being purpose-built for this segment of the workforce, around how they actually work, to help them perform at their best.Phil Dur, co-founder and managing partner of PeakSpan Capital, in Bites' release, October 29, 2026
He added that Bites is being adopted by "commercial, operations and L&D leaders who own frontline results and control budgets that extend well beyond traditional corporate learning." Aviad Ariel, a general partner at Vertex Ventures, which led the seed round, said: "Few companies get customers to come back and ask for more. Bites does."
What the money is for
Bites said the money will pay for US expansion and further platform development. Its commercial priorities are the United States, where Heffetz is moving to New York to build the sales and customer success teams, along with partner and reseller channels and a push into banking, insurance and what it calls the extended workforce.
Bites also wants to tie training to sales, guest scores and turnover using data from point-of-sale, CRM, ERP and HR systems. The release says "parts of this capability are live today"; the full loop, which would spot a dip in a store's numbers, generate a coaching video and measure whether the number recovers, is described as planned. "That's when L&D stops being a cost center and becomes a lever for performance," Heffetz said.
Where Bites sits among frontline training rivals
Venture rounds in training software for deskless staff have been smaller than this; the one larger deal in the table is a private equity firm's controlling stake. Disclosed money at three companies selling to the same kind of employer:
Company | Round | Amount | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
Bites | Series A | $40M | Oct. 2026 |
Arist | Form D sale | $14.1M | Jul. 2026 |
Arist | Series A | $12M | Jul. 2022 |
eduMe | Series B | $20M | Jan. 2022 |
Axonify | Control stake | $250M | Apr. 2021 |
Sources: company releases and filings; Axonify's amount as BetaKit reported it.
PeakSpan led Arist's $12 million Series A in July 2022; Arist delivers courses through messaging tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. Arist's 2026 Form D reports an equity offering of up to $22.5 million, of which $14.1 million had been sold to nine investors after a first sale on July 17. The filing does not name the round or its lead. eduMe raised a $20 million Series B led by Prosus in January 2022. Luminate Capital Partners made a growth investment in Axonify in April 2021; BetaKit reported, citing a company spokesperson, that it bought a controlling stake for $250 million at a $350 million valuation.
What the round says about the category
Bites' single round is twice eduMe's Series B and more than three times Arist's PeakSpan-led Series A. For a company of 30 people, it works out to about $1.3 million per employee, and the commercial priorities the release lists are sales hiring, channels and new markets, alongside further platform development.
The pitch has moved as well. Dur's argument is that the buyers are operations and commercial leaders who control more than a training budget, and Heffetz frames the product as a way to move sales and service numbers. For now, the engagement and retention figures behind that case are the company's own.
Bites' release gives the total, not the history. This round and the 2021 seed come to $45 million of the $55 million, and SaasBuzz found no source saying when the other $10 million was raised or from whom.
