Who's Funding Education Technology?
A Hack Education Project
The Edsurge Financial Network 
According to Crunchbase, Edsurge has raised $8.2 million in venture capital since 2012. (The list of investors in Crunchbase do not match the list of investors on Edsurge's website and neither match what I think is the full list.) Edsurge's backers are some of the most active investors in ed-tech startups more generally, raising a lot of questions about the "independence" the company claims in its coverage of the industry.
Edsurge has also received a number of grants. Its Gates Foundation grants, for example, total over $5 million. (The Gates Foundation has also funded several of Edsurge's investors, including NewSchools Venture Fund and Reach Capital.) In addition to the Gates Foundation, Edsurge has received grant funding from the Joyce Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. (It is not clear if CZI has invested or just given grant funding to various story projects as Zuckerberg's venture philanthropy company fails to be very transparent with its funding record.)
Edsurge also takes sponsorship dollars from the industry in order to research and write articles (here are the companies that sponsored content in 2017), as well as to appear at its conferences. This project is a work in progress, and I have not yet pulled all the data from the Edsurge website to assess who has sponsored content or conference booths.
Edsurge's Financial Backers
Note: some of these, such as AT&T and Salesforce, have funded research on Edsurge via grants. The vast majority of the names listed here are investors, not grant-makers.
- 1776.vc
- AT&T Aspire
- Alan Louie
- Allen & Company
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- Bud Colligan
- Catamount Ventures
- Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
- Dale Dougherty
- David Bulfer
- Deborah Quazzo
- Emerson Collective
- GSV Capital
- George Anders
- Gillian Munson
- Golden Angels
- Graham Holdings
- Imagine K12
- JMD.edu
- Jason Palmer
- Jennifer Fonstad
- Joe Gleberman
- John Katzman
- Joyce Foundation
- Judy Estrin
- Kelly Pope
- Learn Capital
- Lynda Weinman
- Martha Ehmann Conte
- Matthew Hanson
- Nancy Peretsman
- NewSchools Venture Fund
- Omidyar Network
- Reach Capital
- Salesforce
- Steve Blank
- TAL Education
- Tim Ranzetta
- Women's Venture Capital Fund
This data is powered by a GitHub repository: Hack-Education-Data/edsurge. Last updated 28 December 2018