We used CB Insights’ Company Mosaic score, which uses public data and predictive algorithms to assess the strength of private companies, to analyze the top education technology startups globally.
First on our list is Duolingo, a US-based language-learning website. It raised a total of $83.3M and is backed by investors such as New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner Perkins. Second is another US-based startup, Udemy, which offers online courses. It has received $113M in financing and is backed by Insight Venture Partners and Norwest Venture Partners, among others. But two of the companies, Descomplica and Toppr, are focused on Brazil and India, respectively. And news reports state that China is Coursera’s second-biggest market.
Below are the top 10 education tech companies ranked by Mosaic, along with recent news headlines about their products, financings, or partnerships:
Next we analyzed the list above in order to classify our high-momentum ed tech startups into three main categories
- The most numerous subset is a category we call specific learning, which groups together companies geared towards a specific field of study. Examples of specific learning companies in our top Mosaic scores list include PluralSight, targeted towards IT professionals, and Toppr, focused on school-entrance examination prep in India. Four of the top 10 companies fall in this category.
- Education marketplaces, which typically sell from a large catalog of online courses, make up another sizable category. One of the top marketplaces is Coursera, which offers free courseware from top professors. Four out of the top 10 companies are in this category.
- Finally, there are education tools and classroom-management companies. These are companies that work to aid the teacher in the classroom and make the learning process more efficient and effective. Two of the top 10 companies are in this category. Instructure, which operates Canvas, is the highest-ranked company in this category with $89.5M in total funding.
Want more data on ed tech companies? Check out our venture capital database below.
Feature image credit: Marcus Obal, CC BY-SA 3.0
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