Yuanfudao, a homework tutoring app founded in 2012, has raised $2.2 billion from investors, surpassing Byju’s as the most valuable edtech company in the world. The Beijing-based company is now worth $15.5 billion dollars, almost double its valuation set in March. The company views the new capital as two separate extension rounds of its March […]
Knowable, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup focused on audio learning, is switching business models. When the company launched last year, it charged users on a per-class basis. Starting today, it’s shifting entirely to a subscription model, where listeners pay $50 annually or $9.99 per month for unlimited access to the Knowable library. “This gets us closer […]
Long before the coronavirus, Sora, a startup run by a team of Atlanta entrepreneurs, was toying with the idea of live, virtual high school. The program would focus on student autonomy and organize its curriculum around projects that learners wanted to work on, such as finding ways to reduce the impact of climate change on […]
It’s been a big year for online learning companies — and it sounds like Thinkific is no exception. The Vancouver-based startup is announcing that it has raised $22 million in new funding. Thinkific is different from businesses such as MasterClass (which raised $100 million this year) and Skillshare (which raised $66 million) because it doesn’t […]
Mercedes Bent Contributor Share on Twitter Mercedes Bent is a partner at Lightspeed where she invests in consumer, edtech and fintech companies. More posts by this contributor Startup founders must overcome information overload For many of us, learning to ask questions was a matter of the five W’s: who, what, where, when, why (and how). […]
The pandemic has caused K-12 classrooms, chaotic at the best of times, to descend into Zoom call chaos. What’s more, thousands of teachers who must wrangle this new, weird system are doing so with just a single monitor, making it difficult to see their students and the lesson at the same time. Two Screens for […]
The spotlight on edtech grows brighter and harsher: On one end, remote-learning startups are attracting millions in venture capital. On the other, many educators and parents are unimpressed with the technology that enables virtual learning and gaps remain in and out of the classroom. It’s clear that edtech’s nebulous pain points — screen time, childcare […]
Outschool, which started in 2015 as a platform for homeschooled students to bolster their extracurricular activities, has dramatically widened its customer base since the coronavirus pandemic began.The platform saw its total addressable market increase dramatically as students left campus to abide by COVID regulations instituted by the CDC. Suddenly, live, small-group online learning classes became […]
I live in San Francisco, but I work an East Coast schedule to get a jump on the news day. So I’d already been at my desk for a couple of hours on Wednesday morning when I looked up and saw this: What color is the sky this morning pic.twitter.com/nt5dZp5wWc — Walter Thompson (@YourProtagonist) September […]
Toucan has developed a Chrome browser extension designed for anyone who wants to learn a new language but hasn’t found the motivation or the time. Once installed, the extension scans the text of any (English-language) website you’re visiting and will automatically translate some of the words into the language you’re trying to learn. If you […]