Here is the latest data on “the business of ed-tech” for September 2017:
- Amount of venture capital invested during the month: $248 million
- Number of investments: 17
- Average investment size: $14.6 million / Median investment size: $7.4 million
- Number of acquisitions: 6
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 means that the growth in ed-tech funding 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 62 so far this year compared to 86 this time last year and 77 the year before.
About 60% of venture capital dollars this year – roughly $1.6 billion – have gone to US companies. About 30% have gone to Chinese companies – roughly $790 million.
Among the types of companies that seem popular with investors:
- Tutoring – ~$615 million raised so far this year
- Private student loans (and student loan management) – ~$595 million raised so far this year
- Online education – ~$330 million raised so far this year
- Behavior management – ~$150 million raised so far this year
- Language learning – ~$150 million raised so far this year
- Learning management systems – ~$100 million raised so far this year
- Test prep – ~$80 million raised so far this year
- Coding bootcamps – ~$40 million raised so far this year (In addition, learn-to-code apps have raised ~$17 million)
- Job placement and job recruitment – ~$25 million raised so far this year
The Biggest Investments of 2017 (So Far)
The companies that have raised the most money in 2017:
- 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
- Gaosi Education (tutoring) – $83.5 million
- BYJU’s (test prep) – $70 million
- Coursera (online education) –- $64 million
- Absorb (learning management system) – $59 million
- AltSchool (private school; learning management system) – $40 million
- Prodigy Finance (student loans) – $40 million
The Most Active Education Investors
- Reach Capital with 12 investments (Abl, AdmitHub, BookNook, Epic, Holberton School, Mrs. Wordsmith, Mystery Science, Nearpod, PeopleGrove, Lightneer, Tinkergarten, and Piper)
- University Ventures with 12 investments (AdmitHub, CollegeVine, Examity, Motimatic, OOHLALA, Paragon One, PeopleGrove, Packback, EquitySim, Evertrue, Vemo Education, and MissionU)
- GSV with 9 investments (CreativeLive, MasterClass, PeopleGrove, Raise.me, Voxy, Lightneer, Nearpod, Coursera, and Motimatic)
- Rethink Education with 7 investments (Abl, Clark, Knowledge to Practice, Trilogy Education, Vidcode, Voxy, and MissionU)
- Learn Capital with 5 investments (Coursera, Mystery Science, Outschool, Paragon One, and MissionU)
- Owl Ventures with 5 investments (Abl, Lingo Live, Raise.me, Tinkergarten, and Piper)
Download the Data
I also 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.