A few years ago, Darren Shimkus, ex-president of Udemy, had a conversation with Dennis Yang about skills building.Shimkus was of the belief that building skills in the corporate sector was a difficult, but not intractable, challenge — one that could perhaps be solved with the right technology. He brought it up to Yang, who had been Udemy’s CEO.“At Udemy, Yang and I solved the ‘access’ problem to learning — anyone at any company can find great video content on the skills they want to pick up,” Shimkus told TechCrunch. “But it turns out that solving access to video isn’t enough on its own.”One thing led to another, and soon, Shimkus and Yang had a new startup on their hands: Modal.Modal provides personalized technical skills training for a company’s staff, offering on-demand coaching and a pedagogical approach that groups users into semi-structured online learning communities.“Our offering assesses every member of a team, identifies gaps in their skill sets, and creates a custom plan for each team member that minimizes the ‘skill risk’ companies face in hitting their strategic goals,” Shimkus explained. “We support all kinds of goals — modernization efforts, digital transformation and even training new employees from an acquisition.”The upskilling market is a crowded space, occupied by startups like GrowthSpace, Learnsoft, Pollen, Scaler, Workera, and others. So how does Modal plan to make a splash?First, Shimkus says, by honing in on hot trends: data and AI. Modal’s initial set of e-learning courses focus exclusively on these, which seems like a wise strategic choice given today’s market.“The rise of AI is bringing more visibility to data teams than ever before,” Shimkus said

Modal raises $25M to train corporate workers on data and AI.