Category: Platforms | Tech

IBL News | New York

American EdTech companies raised a record-setting up $2.2 billion in 2020, an increase of 30% over 2019.

The latest VC fundraiser is Newsela, a startup taking on textbooks.

K-12 instructional content platform, Newsela announced it raised $100 million in Series D investment funding. It gives the company the unicorn status associated with a billion-dollar valuation.

The investment was led by new investor Franklin Templeton and existing investor TCV, with participation by Owl Ventures, Tao Capital Partners, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Waycross Ventures.

Newsela was founded in 2013 in New York City as a SaaS platform to shift from legacy paper-based materials and textbooks to digitally delivered content in K-12 schools across the country.

Now it claims 37 million registered students and 2.5 million registered teachers in 90% of all U.S. schools. Its 2020 annual recurring revenue grew 81% over 2019, with new bookings surging 115%.

Matthew Gross, Founder & CEO of Newsela, said: “Education leaders are breaking free from the limits of an antiquated marketplace; School administrators are taking this opportunity to future-proof their schools, and they’re not looking back.”

Newsela has a catalog of 14,000 standards-aligned texts across 20+ genres, curated from 175 publishers, including the Associated Press, National Geographic, The New York Times, Scientific American, USA Today, Atlanta Black Star, Human Rights Watch, and Encyclopedia Britannica.

All content is then made ready for classroom instruction by reproducing every text at multiple reading levels, adding assessments, lesson ideas, and professional development. Educators can remix, modify and bundle resources into comprehensive, engaging lessons, or choose from a wealth of pre-built collections.

IBL News | New York

Pearson announced it acquired Spotlight Education in order to provide improved data information and infographics about student performance and progress. The transaction amount was not disclosed.

Spotlight Education turns data into personalized video reports in 30 languages. Founded in 2010, the company based in Davis, California has a staff of 20 employees, all of whom will join Pearson.

In addition to assessment reports, Spotlight provides customized college and career guides that use a student’s data to plot a course to specific colleges and careers, including a timeline of specific, recommended action steps, and college-by-college recommendations.

“No one can deliver clear information about student learning like Spotlight, and no organization can reach as many learners, parents, and educators as Pearson,” said Josh Newman, Spotlight CEO and Founder.

IBL News | New York

Open LMS—formerly called Moodlerooms—announced yesterday that it will open-source by the end of 2021 many of its Moodle modules and enhancements included on its Learnbook platform. The distribution license will be GPLv3.

“Over the months to come, Open LMS will release a variety of different software components in its open-source project roadmap, contributing all of this code back to the open-source community for all educators to take advantage of,” said Phil Miller, Managing Director at Open LMS.

Client-specific customizations, SaaS cloud architecture and management components, and data integration code won’t be released as open-source.

While going more open source, the platform will be rebranded as Open LMS Work.

In December 2020, the parent company, London-based Learning Technologies Group (LTG) acquired eThink Education, a large Moodle provider and Platinum Totara Partner, for $20 million in cash. In October, LTG purchased Australia-based eCreators.

Previously a Blackboard product, Indianapolis-based Open LMS was acquired by Learning Technologies Group plc (LTG) in March 2020.

IBL News | New York

Google Classroom attracted 40 million new users in the last year until reaching 150 million students—the giant of search announced.

“As more teachers use Classroom as their ‘hub’ of learning during the pandemic, many schools are treating it as their learning management system (LMS),” explained in a blog-post Melanie Lazare, Program Manager at Google Classroom.

IBL News | New York

2U will distribute its portfolio of online short courses, boot camps, and degrees to Guild Education’s corporate clients, as an additional channel. A partnership between the two companies was announced this Tuesday. No further details were provided beyond the press release announcement.

Guild’s platform gives access to Fortune 1000 employers to different educational pathways, while Lanham, Maryland-based 2U powers and markets programs for 75 colleges.

“The average college student takes on $29,000 in debt; Guild is focused on helping America’s workforce access affordable education, in partnerships with employers,” said Rachel Carlson, CEO of Guild Education.

This company—which has raised $228.5 million in venture capital to date—claims that “employees going back to school with support from Guild are more than 2x as likely to have a role change or promotion than their colleagues.”

About 79 percent of CEOs worldwide cite their workforce skills gap as a top concern, according to PWC.

IBL News | New York

Coding instructional platform Codeacademy announced yesterday it raised $40 million in a Series D round after years without raising capital. The round was led by Owl Ventures, with participation from Prosus and Union Square Venture.

Other startups like Udacity, CourseHero, Quizlet, and Class Dojo have been equally raising new funding as capital is flowing into the EdTech industry during the pandemic. The global health crisis has notoriously woken up VCs’ appetite for the remote learning sector.

New York-based Codeacademy said it will use the funding to add new products and courses and expand its footprint in growing markets like India. So far, the firm has raised $82.5M from investors.

Founded in 2011, the online learning platform claims to host 50 million learners, after seeing a large uptick with five million new users—150,000 paid subscribers of Codecademy Pro, and 600 customers of Codecademy for Business—in 2020.

“The company has been cash-flow positive for over two years and has consistently grown in new users and revenue,” said Zach Sims, CEO and Co-Founder.

Codeacademy provides online training on popular coding languages suitable for data science, machine learning, and game development-based careers. Along with a basic plan, it offers a $19 a month Pro membership.

Their Codeacademy for Business unit offers regular exercises, assessments and certificates intended to provide new skills on coding to corporate learners.

We’re thrilled to announce our next big step forward: the close of our Series D funding round. Find out what it means for our learners and our mission on our blog. https://t.co/Z8ZH4ZK84p

— Codecademy (@Codecademy) February 23, 2021

IBL News | New York

Babbel, the German subscription-based language learning app, announced this month that is adding live classes capped at six students and delivered by certified teachers. (Currently, Babbel is working with 100 teachers.)

Users can add live classes to their existing Babbel subscription for an additional fee, starting at $110 for five classes/month.

The Berlin-based learning platform also announced language-based games in its app, along with short stories to help students using their new vocabulary.

In the last year, Babbel claimed it crossed a milestone at 10 million subscriptions sold, with $150 million in revenue. Its CEO, Julie Hansen said to Techcrunch.com that the travel restrictions due to the pandemic didn’t affect the company’s growth.

“So I was in such a panic by mid-March, thinking that our business is going to go to zero. No one’s traveling. And it was just the exact opposite. People found in language learning — as they did in bike riding and sourdough bread baking — a creative outlet, self-improvement or a rewarding investment in themselves.”

IBL News | New York

Instructure Inc—the owner of Canvas LMS—discretely sold this week its corporate LMS for corporate customers Bridge to London–based Learning Technologies Group plc (LTG), which operates two platforms: PeopleFluent and BreezyHR.

The news service of the London Stock Exchange (RNS) reported that the acquisition amount was $50 million in cash.

Bridge registered a revenue of $21 million last year, of which more than 90% was derived from recurring annual and multi-year contracts from 800 customers. It posted an EBITDA loss of $1.3 million in the same period.

“This latest addition enables LTG to provide a holistic learning and talent development offering to meet the needs of small, mid-size and large enterprises,” said Jonathan Satchell, Chief Executive of LTG, in a press announcement. Significantly, Instructure has not announced the transaction yet.

The acquisition of getBridge LLC—the company behind Bridge—is expected to complete on 26th February 2021. It will be funded from LTG’s existing cash resources, according to the company.

Bridge represents LTG’s seventh acquisition since May 2020, including Open LMS / Moodle Rooms. Its Board announced that “it will continue to pursue high-quality acquisition targets financed through its own cash resources and modest levels of debt.”

LTG’s businesses include LEO Learning, Gomo, PRELOADED, Rustici Software, PeopleFluent, Affirmity, Watershed, VectorVMS, Instilled, and Open LMS.

IBL News | New York

Virtual laboratory and 3D simulations producer Labster raised this month another $60 million in Series C funding, benefiting from the increased demand of students forced to learn from home.

The round brings Labster’s total capital raised to $100 million. Well-known investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, GGV Capital, Owl Ventures, Balderton Capital, and EduCapital participated.

Michael Bodekaer, Founder & CEO of Labster, said that the company would use the funding to further expand—especially in South America—and develop new science courses.

Named one of Newsweek’s 50 U.S. Businesses That Stood Out During the Pandemic, Labster’s staff of 200 employees serves 2,000 universities and high-schools in 70+ countries.

“Labster recognizes that if you combine the best aspects of in-person instruction and a game-based platform, it’s a transformative learning experience for students,” said Scott Kupor, Managing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, the VC that led the funding round.

Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Labster says that its interactive simulations are a complementary learning tool for in-person university and high school education, as well as a resource to many hybrid and online courses.

IBL News | New York

Saylor Academy introduced Bitcoin for Everybody, a 12-hour, free certificate course to educate the world on bitcoin.

According to the creators, the class is intended to “assist anyone seeking to harness this digital monetary network,” said the creators.

“Bitcoin for Everybody” takes the learner to the basics of this Bitcoin economics, investment, philosophy, and history, as well as its technical and practical components. [Course Syllabus Page]

To earn a course completion certificate, the learner needs a grade of 70% or higher on the final exam. The delivery platform is Moodle.