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I have updated this project with October funding information. As always, the data is freely and openly available via the GitHub repository that powers this site.

I should note that I’ve revised a little bit how I calculate each month’s totals. I no longer count debt financing. If I did, the $100,000,000 raised by private loan company Affirm would be the largest amount raised this month. I’ve gone back through previous months and adjusted the figures, which brings the totals down for June and April.

The amount of money raised in October was the lowest of any month so far this year: $111 million. The number of deals and the number of acquisitions were also the lowest they’ve been all year.

  • Amount invested: $111,370,000
  • Number of investments: 13
  • Average investment size: $8,566,923 / Median: $4,000,000
  • Number of acquisitions: 7
  • Number of mergers: 1

The ed-tech startups that have raised the most this year:

  1. Age of Learning ($150,000,000)
  2. BYJU’s ($125,000,000)
  3. Vipkid and Affirm ($100,000,000)
  4. Incred ($75,000,000)
  5. Zuoyebang, Udemy, and Student.com ($60,000,000)
  6. Kaltura ($50,000,000)
  7. Galvanize and Matific ($45,000,000)
  8. Panopto ($42,800,000)
  9. Everfi, Jerry Education, Edlio, and Grovo ($40,000,000)
  10. CommonBond and Codecademy ($30,000,000)

I’m going to hold off on in-depth analysis for now, as I’m about to switch gears and start work on my “year in review” articles. But I will note: it certainly appears as though “the business of ed-tech” is far worse off – in terms of venture capital, at least – this year than it was in the big boom days of 2015. The amount of money invested and number of deals are both about 65% of what they were at the end of October 2015. By the end of December, the comparison could look even worse, as there was over a billion dollars invested in November 2015 and I’m not sure I foresee that happening this year.

Audrey Watters


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A Hack Education Project

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