Here is the latest data on “the business of education” for June 2018:
- Amount of venture capital invested during the month: $$584.4 million
- Number of investments: 13
- Average investment size: $44.95 million / Median investment size: $5 million
- Number of acquisitions: 15
- Number of mergers: 1
- Number of IPOs: 0
- Number added to the “ed-tech dead pool”: 1
Investment Trends
We’re halfway through 2018, which means it’s time to start thinking about what the trends are looking like for the year. Certainly those trends are quite obvious when you look at which companies have received the largest investments so far this year. (See below.)
It may be that 2018 is on track to see more ed-tech investment than in the previous three years (and 2015 was a record-breaking year). But just looking at the total amount of investment is a little deceiving, and this month’s funding is a good example of this. More dollars went into ed-tech companies this past month than in any month so far this year. But of that $584.4 million, $500 million went to one company, VIPKID. The number of deals in June was actually the lowest it’s been all year, and the number of deals total is down from the previous few years too.
That means that fewer companies are seeing larger investments, obviously. Consolidation in the market is also evident in the number of acquisitions – the highest in June than it’s been all year.
One other interesting trend from June – and I don’t want to read too much into this: of the 13 companies that raised venture funding, just 4 were from the US.
The Biggest Investments of 2018 (So Far)
The companies that have raised the most money in 2018 (not including the venture capital firms that have raised new funds):
- VIPKID (tutoring): $500 million
- 17zouye (tutoring): $200 million
- Zhangmen (tutoring): $120 million
- Connexeo (school administration software): $110 million
- DadaABC (English language learning): $100 million
- Knowbox (tutoring): $100 million
Download the Data
As part of this project, you can review information from the last few years who’s received funding, who’s been acquired, who’s IPO’d, which startups have closed, and who’s investing in the stories that Edsurge tells you about the shape of the education technology industry.
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.