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Here is the latest data on “the business of education” for November 2018:

  • Amount of venture capital invested during the month: $550 million
  • Number of investments: 16
  • Average investment size: $34.3 million / Median investment size: $2.5 million
  • Number of acquisitions: 6
  • Number of mergers: 0
  • Number of IPOs: 0
  • Number added to the “ed-tech dead pool”: 0

Investment Trends


I’ll be writing my big article on “the year in ed-tech investing” in a couple of weeks, so I’ll hold off much of the analysis until then. But I will point out that, of the 16 funding rounds this month, 5 of them were for tutoring companies. This is, no doubt, where the bulk of ed-tech investment is going – you can see that in the list below too.

The Biggest Investments of 2018 (So Far)

The companies that have raised the most money so far this year (not including the venture capital firms that have raised new funds):

  • VIPKID (tutoring): $500 million
  • Zuoyebang (tutoring): $350 million
  • Yuanfudao (tutoring): $250 million
  • 17zuoye (tutoring): $200 million
  • Peilian.com (music education): $150 million
  • DreamBox Learning (adaptive learning): $130 million
  • Zhangmen (tutoring): $120 million
  • Connexeo (school administration software): $110 million
  • DadaABC (English language learning): $100 million
  • Knowbox (tutoring): $100 million
  • BYJU’s (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.)

Audrey Watters


Published

Who's Funding Education Technology?

A Hack Education Project

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