Here is the latest data on “the business of ed-tech” for August 2017:
- Amount of venture capital invested during the month: $424,700,000
- Number of investments: 10
- Average investment size: $42,470,000 / Median investment size: $6,000,000
- Number of acquisitions: 8
Investment Trends
The amount of money invested so far this year remains higher than at the same time in 2016 and 2015. (Indeed, the amount invested so far this year has now surpassed the total raised in 2016.) But the number of investment deals has fallen. That is to say, the funding total for the year is being driven by a small number of very large investments – there have been nine of $100 million or more.
Acquisitions are also down from previous years – only 56 so far this year compared to 77 this time last year and 71 the year before.
The types of companies that seem popular with investors include:
- Tutoring – $606.5 million raised so far this year
- Private student loans – $580.5 million raised so far this year
- Online education – $320.9 million raised so far this year
- Behavior management – $150 million raised so far this year
- Language learning – $148.2 million raised so far this year
- Test prep – $80 million raised so far this year
- Coding bootcamps – $40.6 million raised so far this year (In addition, learn-to-code apps have raised $6.8 million)
The Biggest Investments So Far This Year
The companies that have raised the most money so far this year:
- SoFi (private student loans) –- $500 million
- VIPKID (tutoring) – $200 million
- EverFi (“critical skills” training) –- $190 million
- Zuoyebang (tutoring) – $150 million
- Hero K12 (behavior management) –- $150 million
- Yuanfandao (tutoring) –- $120 million
- Grammarly (grammar and spelling assistance) –- $110 million
- Xueba100.com (tutoring) -– $100 million
- Liulishuo (language learning) – $100 million
- BYJU’s (test prep) – $70 million
- Coursera (online education) –- $64 million
- AltSchool (private school; learning management system) – $40 million
- Prodigy Finance (student loans) – $40 million
Download the Data
I have created separate GitHub repositories for all areas of funding that I monitor:
These sites include human- and machine-readable versions of this funding data. For more ed-tech data sets, visit Hack Education Data on GitHub.
If you see an error or omission, please file a GitHub issue. You’re welcome to fork or download the repositories too, of course.