These are the investments and acquisitions related to part five of my year-in-review series, “The Weaponization of Education Data.” This includes investments in “personalized learning,” adaptive learning, learning analytics, and education-cybersecurity companies. Just kidding. No one is investing in education cybersecurity.

Investments

• Adeptemy raised $3.48 million from Enterprise Ireland and Folens for adaptive learning software
• Smart Sparrow raised $4 million from Moelis Australia Asset Management, One Ventures, and Uniseed Ventures for adaptive learning software
• Civitas Learning raised an undisclosed amount of funding from the Lumina Foundation. The predictive analytics company has previously raised $63.9 million
• Panorama Education raised $16 million from Emerson Collective, Spark Capital, Owl Ventures, SoftTechVC, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. While it initially described itself as an analytics company, it’s now marketing itself as a “social and emotional learning” startup
• Yixue Education raised $41 million from NGP Capital, SIG China, CASH Capital, New Oriental Education & Technology, and Greenwood Management for its adaptive learning software

Acquisitions

• Macmillan Learning acquired the analytics company Intellus Learning
• Elsevier acquired Plum Analytics, an altmetrics company
• Ingram Content Group acquired the analytics company Thrivist
• Analytics company BrightByes acquired Authentica Solution
• Chegg acquired the adaptive math platform Cogeon for $15 million

Personalized Learning and CZI

I will write more about the investments of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in an upcoming article in this series. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to track where it’s spending its money as it does not always post that information publicly. The investment company has promised to make “personalized learning” a funding priority. It has funded a series on Edsurge, promoting “personalized learning.” It has also backed the Chiefs for Change education reform group.