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These are the investments and acquisitions related to part eight of my year-in-review series – “Robots Are Coming For Your Jobs.”

The amount of money invested in coding bootcamps and learn-to-code companies made this “trend” one of the most popular – or at least, one of the most well-funded, this year.

Coding Bootcamp Investments in 2017


  • Andela raised $40 million in October from Google Ventures, Spark Capital, Salesforce Ventures, CRE Venture Capital, TLcom Capital Partners, VentureSouq, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, DBL Partners, and Amplo. The bootcamp, which has locations in Africa, has raised $81 million total
  • Trilogy Education raised $30 million in June from City Light Capital, Highland Capital Partners, and Rethink Education
  • The Latin American chain of coding schools Digital House raised $20 million in December from Omidyar Network, Kaszek Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, Marcos Galperin, The Rise Fund, and Martin Migoya
  • Galvanize raised $7 million in October from University Ventures and ABS Capital Partners. It has raised $102.4 million total
  • SecureSet Academy raised $4 million in January. The Colorado Impact Fund was the investor
  • Ironhack raised $3 million in July from JME Venture Capital
  • The Holberton School raised $2.3 million in February. Investors in that round were daphni, Reach Capital, NE YO, and Jerry Murdock. The school has raised $4.3 million total
  • Girl Geek Academy raised $1.3 million in January. Investors were not disclosed
  • Fire Tech Camp raised $863,525 in November from Emerge Education and Cass Entrepreneurship Fund. It’s a tech camp for kids, and it’s raised $863,525 total

Other Learn-to-Code Investments in 2017


  • Wonder Workshop raised $41 million in October from CRV, Madrona Venture Group, Tencent Holdings, Sinovation Ventures, WI Harper Group, Softbank Ventures Korea, MindWorks Ventures, TAL Education Group, TCL Capital, Bright Success Capital. The robotics company has raised $78.34 million total
  • MakeBlock raised $30 million in March from Evolution Media Capital and Shenzhen Capital Group. The robotics maker has raised $36 million total
  • Kano Computing raised $28 million in November from Index Ventures, LocalGlobe, Collaborative Fund, Marc Benioff, TriplePoint Capital, Breyer Capital, Barclays PLC, Stanford University Venture Fund, John Makinson, and Thames Trust. The robotics company has raised $44.5 million total
  • “STEAM” startup Piper raised $7.6 million in September from Owl Ventures, Reach Capital, StartX, and Charles Huang. It’s raised $9.75 million total
  • SAM Labs raised $6.75 million in November from Touchstone Innovations and E15 Ventures. It’s raised $11.2 million total
  • Ozobot raised $3 million in February for its line of programmable robotics toys. Investors included Mark Rampolla and Tribeca Venture Partners
  • Tenka Labs raised $2 million in September for its engineering kits. Investors were not disclosed. The company has raised $4.1 million total
  • CodeMonkey raised $1.5 million for a “game-based coding education platform” in February. Investors included J21 Corporation, Invictus Capital, the China-Israel Education VC Fund, and Edulab. The company has raised $2.23 million total
  • Vidcode raised $1.5 million in July from BrainPOP, Cherry Ventures, CoVenture, Rethink Education, Stephano Kim, and ZhenFund. It’s raised $1.62 million total
  • Bomberbot raised $808,680 in April from Social Impact Ventures for its “educational gaming platform” that teaches coding. It has raised $1.19 million total

Mergers in 2017


  • Code Interactive and Mouse merged in November

Acquisitions in 2017


  • In March, Udacity acquired CloudLabs
  • In September, Carnegie Learning, one of the original “computer-assisted instruction” companies, acquired Globaloria
  • WeWork acquired the Flatiron School in October
  • In December, Thinkful acquired Viking Code School

Closures in 2017


It’s probably worth noting that, despite all this investment, three of the five ed-tech companies that closed this year were in this sector: The Iron Yard, a coding bootcamp owned by Apollo Education Group; Dev Bootcamp, a coding bootcamp owned by Kaplan; and TechShop, a makerspace.

Grants in 2017


These numbers do not reflect the grants that have gone to learn-to-code initiatives like Code.org, which received some $12 million from the Gates Foundation, Infosys, and PwC and $10 million from Amazon this year.

Audrey Watters


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