In the News
EDTECH NEWS THAT MATTERS
GHP is your source for the news on the EdTech mergers, acquisitions, and trends that are helping to shape our industry.
IN EDTECH NEWS - April 2019
April 29, 2019
Most investors shy away from bets on companies that provide similar services for an obvious reason: Don’t have one portfolio company that can cannibalize another.
But SEEK Group, an Australian operator of online educational and employment services, has doubled down on massive open online courses. Less than a week after it announced leading Coursera’s $103 million Series E round, SEEK is at it again with a £50 million (about $65 million) investment in London-based MOOC platform FutureLearn.
April 30, 2019
Examity has raised $90 million from Boston private equity firm Great Hill Partners to fuel its expansion and dig into how machine learning and biometric tools can make tests proctored online more secure.
April 23, 2019
Coursera, a global online learning platform that offers courses, certificates and degrees from more than 150 universities, announced Thursday it had secured $103 million in a Series E round to expand its international reach and prepare learners for the rising challenges of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.”
April 29, 2019
In the already hot job market for workers with tech-based skills, cloud computing is among the hottest.
With tens of thousands of openings and a median salary around $146,000, it’s an attractive line of work for those with the right skill sets — often in Amazon Web Services and similar infrastructures.
April 28, 2019
Nearpod is a comprehensive student engagement platform that enables 100% student participation in K-12 classrooms.
Guido Kovalskys founded the company in 2012 alongside two lifelong friends and fellow entrepreneurs Felipe Sommer and Emi Abramzon after seeing the vast transformational potential that technology could have in the classroom.
April 25, 2019
April 23, 2019
Drive Capital has closed its third flagship fund on $307 million and raised nearly $251 million for its first overdrive fund, per SEC filings. Based in Columbus, OH, the early-stage investor focuses on the IT, financial services and healthcare sectors, with a portfolio that includes edtech businesses Udacity and Duolingo.
April 25, 2019
Online education company Coursera announced today it raised $103 million in a Series E equity funding round to expand the international reach of its coursework, degree offerings, and workforce training programs.
April 23, 2019
PRETTY IN PINCUS: Gaosi Education, a Beijing-based tutoring services provider, has raised $140 million in a Series D round led by New York private equity firm Warburg Pincus. Gaosi plans to use the money toward product research and development, according to Caixin. The company has raised around $320 million including past rounds.
April 16, 2019
April 19, 2019
April 19, 2019
TIP OF THE HAT: WhiteHat Jr, the provider of a childhood coding education platform, has raised $1.3 million in seed funding from Nexus Venture Partners and Omidyar Network India.
April 23, 2019
MODO MAKING MOVES: Modo Labs, a Cambridge, Mass.-based mobile app development platform with clients in higher education, has bought campus e-commerce transactions company Ulyngo.
April 16, 2019
April 10, 2019
April 12, 2019
Leaders in the edtech community praised the introduction of the Digital Equity Act of 2019 to the Senate on Thursday, which aims to connect more communities across the country to high-speed internet.
April 08, 2019
STRIKE LIGHTNING: CampusLogic, a student financial services platform, has bought Funderbolt, a provider of college student fundraising software for an undisclosed amount.
Funderbolt, which allows students to raise money for tuition and educational expenses, will rebrand as SponsoredScholar, according to a statement Monday. The company claims it has supported more than 600 campaigns for a variety of student activities, including fundraisers for volleyball and rowing teams.
April 11, 2019
Pearson, one of the world’s largest educational products companies, is launching Pearson Ventures, a $50 million corporate venture fund focused on early-stage educational technology companies.
April 08, 2019
A prominent edtech company is taking out a super-sized checkbook to stretch its services across what it calls the “career curriculum continuum.”
2U announced Monday that it will acquire coding bootcamp provider Trilogy Education Services for $750 million in cash and stock.
Lanham, Md.-based 2U, which makes online courses for educational institutions, will nearly double its count of university partners following the deal, from 36 to 68.
April 08, 2019
WISCONSIN RAPIDS, Wis., April 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Renaissance®, a global leader in pre-K–12 education technology, today announced that it has acquired Early Learning Labs. The acquisition comes in response to customer requests for a curriculum-based measurement (CBM) option and increased tools to support younger students.
April 03, 2019
STRIKE LIGHTNING: CampusLogic, a student financial services platform, has bought Funderbolt, a provider of college student fundraising software for an undisclosed amount.
Funderbolt, which allows students to raise money for tuition and educational expenses, will rebrand as SponsoredScholar, according to a statement Monday. The company claims it has supported more than 600 campaigns for a variety of student activities, including fundraisers for volleyball and rowing teams.
April 05, 2019
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED: Landed, which helps teachers afford down payments on houses, has closed a $7.5 million Series A round with participation from Initialized Capital.
The San Francisco-based startup, founded in 2015, claims to have helped hundreds of people into more than $100 million worth of houses in the areas of Denver, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego and Los Angeles, according to a statement Landed published Friday.
April 04, 2019
MONKEY SEE, MONKEY SIGN: CareMonkey, a Melbourne, Australia-based startup that provides schools with digital software to replace paper forms, has raised $1.5 million in a seed round led by Peter Bencivenga, with New Ground Ventures and Rethink Education also participating.
April 05, 2019
GIB AND TAKE: GIBLIB, a Los Angeles-based provider of video and virtual reality medical education content, has closed a $2.5 million seed round. Investors in the round include Mayo Clinic, USC Marshall Venture Fund, Venture Reality Fund, Wavemaker 360 and Michelson 20 MM.
April 06, 2019
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has announced that it is providing more than $1.6 million to the Jefferson Education Exchange (JEX) to launch an effort aimed at expanding the role of educators in helping shape the national education research agenda and helping them make informed decisions about education technology.
April 05, 2019
MyEG Capital, the investment arm of e-government service provider MyEG Services Bhd, announced that it has invested a total of US$1.5 million into Chinese edtech company Jingle Magic, as reported by Deal Street Asia.
Joining the investment are Zhejiang ZHongdi Investment Management, which is an education sector-focused investment fund affiliated with Tsinghua Holdings Group’s Muhua Education Fund, and VC firm Beijing Dianjing Zhiyuan Investment Center.
April 06, 2019
A billionaire once told me that no matter what the question is, the answer will come when you “follow the money.” If you agree with this thesis, China is unequivocally the world’s leader in EdTech.
In 2018, Chinese startups received over 50% of all the capital invested by venture capitalists in EdTechs worldwide. Chinese EdTech companies received more money than the total amount invested in EdTech firms from all other countries combined, according to a study released by HolonIQ earlier this year.
April 03, 2019
Education secretary Damian Hinds has announced a government strategy which calls on technology companies to partner with schools to help them tackle common challenges.
The £10m fund will be available to help develop these technologies as well as the partnerships needed to support schools in adopting them.
April 02, 2019
Instructure, the publicly traded company best known for its learning management systems (LMS) Canvas and Bridge, has agreed to acquire a fellow Salt Lake City-based education technology company, MasteryConnect, for $42.5 million.
Of that figure, about $12.3 million will be paid in Instructure common stock, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The deal is expected to close by next Tuesday.
April 02, 2019
MONEY WHERE THE MOUTH IS: The following statement has been repeated so often among the edtech community that it almost sounds like a broken record: Educators should have more say in decisions around purchasing and implementing education technology.
April 01, 2019
Technology leaders from five schools in five different states were named “NextGen: Emerging EdTech Leaders” at the Consortium for School Networking annual conference in Portland, Oregon, on Monday.