Welcome to Tech insiders where we speak with founders operators investors and thought leaders in the education technology industry and report on cutting edge news in this fast evolving field from around the globe. From AI to xr to K 12 to l&d, you'll find everything you need here on Ed Tech insiders. And if you liked the podcast please give us a rating and a review so others can find it more easily.
Hi, everybody, it is Ed Tech insiders. And we are back in July was amazing. I was in Colombia, hanging out with who Leon his family and visiting meta Yang Carter, Hannah Santa Marta a heck of a taro Botha even wrote up a quick review of the Colombian ed tech echo system. Because of course, when I'm on vacation, what do I do? I mean with that tech founders, what were you up to this summer, Alex,
I did, was sweating stateside on the East Coast just dripping here and there just trying to keep on top of my schedule at the family and everything. But it's been a lot of fun. Our son turned one in early July, which is really fun. We had a party. And I've been trying to learn as much as I possibly can about AI, because it is just so interesting, and so relevant to everything. But yeah, unfortunately, no traveling this time.
I can't believe it's been a year. And that's so special. Well, listeners, we have a rapid fire episode for you. So buckle your seatbelts. We're going to take you through everything that's happened over July. The winners the losers, higher ed K 12, workforce, VC, the hits keep on coming. And it's been an insane summer. And of course, we'll talk a little bit about AI like we always do probably a lot of bit. Before we do that, though. The pod is
still been going. Alex, tell us what we've got coming up this week on the pot.
Yeah, the long form interviews don't take summers off. So you know, we just published two really, really interesting episodes. One is with co founder Ben Waitley of Memrise. He is fascinating neuroscientist turned founder really interesting. Just this week, we put out unlocking the potential of voice AI and education with Dr. Martin fyros. He's the CEO of soapbox labs. So bucks Labs is a voice recognition tech that powers you know, half of the tech industry, including all the major
publishers. And the next week, we have an amazing interview with Christina Ishmael. She's the director of the Office of Educational Technology at the US Department of Education. So talking about what the US DOE has been thinking about in terms of AI, what they've been talking about for policy, how they're thinking about evidence. Super cool. Check those all out when you get a chance.
Well, it is great to have you all back here. And those podcasts are setting us up for a great back to school sprint. Let's start high level Alex and just looking back over the summer. What are the biggest stories and let's start with like big winners, what stands out to you?
Yeah, I mean, I think there's no question in my mind that the big winner of the summer for edtech is Kahoot. That is our friends in Scandinavia and England, I believe the who've been building this tool for quite a number of years. They already had a good relationship with Lego, who was a big investor, they went private this summer for almost $2 billion from Goldman Sachs, LEGO Group, general Atlantic.
That is a pretty wild and you know, they had only gone public a couple of years ago, through a European stock exchange, the stock hadn't done particularly well. It was sort of bumping along. So taking it back private, and having Lego sort of lean into it. It's really exciting. And that's one of the biggest deals we've seen in a long time for ad tech. What do you think?
Yeah, I haven't had too many investments in kronor. So this was a rare one. You know, it is interesting, because there's both a winner side of this and the loser side of this, you know, they were previously valued, I believe at 6 billion. And so this 1.7 2 billion valuation is down from their high watermark. Now, when you compare that to many of the other publicly traded education and ed tech stocks, that is not
as big of a mark down. You know, I think it's just a testament to even for the winners and leading companies in our space. We are seeing a market correction from the 2021 peak valuations. The only other one that I would add to the Kahoot winner category is also Duolingo Duolingo is revenue has just continued like a freight train. If you look at their quarter over quarter, they're seeing everything from like, 50 to 200% growth in their
different categories. And if you want to see an example of someone who's leaned into AI with tremendous momentum and acceleration, it is Duolingo.
It's actually to the point where, you know, stock market analysts are saying, you know, maybe it's a little bit too hot now, because it's just, it's really outperforming everyone else in the sector, math group, I went to business school with he's their CFO has a great interview online on Yahoo Finance, just really about the discipline of their product, led growth, motion their AI,
infrastructure. And just goes to show that, you know, for every down story that we've had in the past six months, there's also, you know, an exception to the rule or an alternative upside. And there's let's go to losers, Alex, like who, going back over the summer, who are the big companies that took big hits?
Sure. So definitely big hits this this summer. I mean, we've continued to see really strange and quite negative press around by Jews, the biggest edtech company in the world, out of India, you know, earlier in the summer, we saw the board of directors, three different major directors walk out on the company, basically citing that the founders weren't listening to them or weren't sort of being
strategic enough. We saw Deloitte pull out all sorts of bizarre headlines and and just over the last couple of weeks, ones about ex employees are, you know, employees that are on the verge of being laid off making these giant public complaints and even Baidu himself, sort of really being stressed by the situation. So 5g is just continues to dominate the headlines in very strange ways, even though they're also doing really interesting things with
AI. And then, you know, just this week, we saw layoffs at paper. I think you know more about this than me, Ben, tell us about what's going on in paper.
Well, ultimately, we're moving past the chat. First Student instigated tutoring model is really the bigger headline. And so paper is kind of caught up in that. And they're certainly one of the leading companies during 2021. They closed huge deals. And there were kind of three components of those huge deals, one was new SR funds. So lots of new federal stimulus dollars around closing the learning loss gaps, to the contracts were kind of front loaded, but had performance incentives in it.
And the kind of utilization rates were just incredibly low. And we've covered that in the podcast before. And then I'd say three, there was also, you know, lack of efficacy. And you know, we'll talk more about this, I think the truth of the matter is high dosage. Tutoring is very different than text message,
homework help. And we had a buying public that maybe the school districts and you know, I'm going to school board, and we're not always the best purchasers, maybe the expectations were too high for what they were buying. Maybe the kind of implementation wasn't right. But across all teams we're hearing and, you know, we don't have any of the official numbers, but Phil Cutler, who was on our pod as well, you know, made the announcement
about the layoffs. It seems like it was a pretty large move that said on paper has done some m&a over the past six months. So you've got to wonder how much cash do they have are those m&a options, making them more efficient, and maybe they're shedding like headcount, because they've got more of a full
product offering. But you know, for both buy juice and paper, I will say, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire, and I think this is one of those where we're going to have to keep an eye on both of these ad tech unicorns.
Absolutely. And just one more positive note, just to flip that goes student as of this week, I believe it's just a couple of days ago announced a $95 million funding round, which is a the lot for this particular moment in time we, you know, the bread I report, this half said that there really has not been that many big rounds at all in any of Europe in any of anywhere. And so a $95 million round as sort of basically a mega round is big news. So that's just came out
this week. And hopefully, that is a harbinger of things to come with a little bit of a bounce.
I love your positive spin on that one. I read that news. And it smells really fishy to me. And you know, I with humility is hard to run a tech companies and go student had a meteoric rise. They were going to open up or they did open up offices in Texas and then you know, I think subsequently I've closed all of that down. This money if you read the press is debt and equity, and they don't distinguish how much of 95 million is debt and how much is
warning flag number one. Number two, it talks about them doing a mixed in person virtual offering, which the like subtext of that is, kids aren't engaging in pure online. When you start financing physical locations, your numbers look like 95 million. And that's where you get the debt from you have, you're taking loans out to build physical centers or build out and lease physical centers, very, very different than a tech
based model. So, you know, those students would I'd also put those students as another unicorn on my watch list, there's no way that the valuations that they were raising at and 2021 hold in today's market conditions. So whatever the term sheet is, on any of this 95 million equity, it's going to be meaningfully different than what it was before. Then last, if you look at the round, who's funding it, the equity people that are in it are all the people that were in
the last round. So this is a bridge, this is like, help us pivot into this, like digital physical space. That is
true, it does feel like that. And they're also talking about a virtual reality program. So they're looking for sort of ways to expand. And they're also coming from the tutoring space, which is obviously going through a lot of change right now as as people try to find, you know, what post COVID tutoring looks like, I still choose to see it positively. But I think I think
you know, Alex, I just shake my head, though. Because it's like, ah, you know, like, you come back from the summer, and it's back to school. And you're like, Okay, we know we have all these challenges, but at least some sub sectors of edtech are going well. And it's like tutoring, which was a really big hope for our space is really having a retrenchment.
And by the way, I think there's many good tutoring nonprofit, and for profit organizations that are doing great things, they're just, many of them aren't doing the kind of high margin, like tech enabled thing. They're doing much more human staffing, you know, like lower margin higher cost things, but
there may be a way, I mean, yeah, been talking to a bunch of tutoring CEOs over the last couple of weeks. And I think that human faces is necessary and that relationships necessary. I think this is exactly why the text based tutoring where you know, you don't know who you're talking to, and it changes every time has not been very appealing to the end users and hard to implement. But I hear you, and I'm definitely with you with
Duolingo. That one, we can I think share our positive note on because Duolingo is fast becoming you know, the Oregon Trail for lack of a better word, you know, the go to company that your grandmother will think of if you say, Hey, what is Ed Tech right now. And they've done an incredible job, partially because they were founded on a basis of AI way back in the day, their founder is an AI guy. And there's new ones coming in now new founders who are coming from the AI space that I also have a
lot of high hopes for. Also, they've been incredibly good at using AI, we've gone back and forth about, you know, Duolingo Max, and how they charge for their AI. But it's starting to become the norm to upcharge for AI because it costs so much. And I feel like they I still feel like they were a little ahead of the curve on that. But let's talk about some of the partnerships that have been happening this summer, because they're pretty exciting ones, I think, yeah,
so for me, the two big ones were Instructure and Khan Academy and New Zealand formative, you know, the Instructure. And Khan continues a run of like big hits by Khan Academy. And just so everyone knows, you know, conmigo, the chat bot partnership with open AI, we had Kristin to cerbo on our podcast, who kind of gave us the inside story. If you haven't listened to that pod, you got to
look it up. They are a for profit, and they are crushing it in terms of scale and market share and just shaping the space and conmigo let's just be really clear. They're also very forward with what the limitations and pros and cons of conmigo are and can be. But if you're going from digital video one way push out, you know, which is the old con model, you know, libraries of videos of people teaching math concepts to this interactive to a conversational dialogue. It
really is powerful. And this partnership with Instructure means that canvas, which is the largest LMS in the K 12 market, but also very, very prevalent in higher ed is immediately through Canvas, they're going to be immediately accessible to millions and millions of students. On the instructor side. It's a PE backed firm.
They are essentially getting a huge steal, because they don't have to build their own AI chatbot and they're able to, you know, leverage everything conmigo has built so I have no idea what the business terms of this are, but what it looks like is Instructure is building this emerging AI marketplace of AI apps. And that includes magic ed tech sponsor of the pod conmigo, noodle factory Trinka, it is Instructure has realized that they are a double sided
marketplace. And on one side they have students, learners and institutions. And on the other side, they have content, AI companies and curriculum. And this is a really powerful move. And by the way, combining that with their acquisition of learn platform, they also can do the efficacy work on the back end. And just round it out news ELA acquiring formative, you know, I'll give you some of the floor
on this one. But you know, the question about Newsela, with the new CEO pep Carrera joined, and PEP was previously the CEO of Nearpod and sold Nearpod. Are they going to be buyers? Or are they going to be sellers, they've been around for 10 years, they're kind of long in the tooth from a VC, you know, portfolio perspective. And they're coming out swinging. And I love it, because formative is an innovative assessment platform that combines with Newsela has really, really
powerful leveled content. And you know, with everything going on in AI and the ability for AI to generate level of content, news, Ella had to decide like, are we going for it? And are we going big? Or are we going to kind of find our exit, and I just, I think it's exciting to have people shaking things up. And the formative team is just awesome. So you know, summer is a time of your friends getting married, and all that stuff and wedding? Our summer weddings
that I was excited about? Were Instructure and con in New Zealand formative. What about 100%?
Yeah, so just one line on each of those Khan Academy. Yeah, you said for profit, but of course, nonprofit Khan Academy. All right, yeah. Yeah, not everybody listeners all knew it. But I'm incredibly excited about the reach as well. The one thing I'd say about Canvas here, and Instructure in Canvas is they are doing a really brilliant job of acquisitions and partnerships. The only risk for them, I'm just
gonna say it out loud here. As you know, when Canvas came on the scene, they disrupted the entire LMS space, especially Blackboard back in the day by being more user friendly, more flexible, you know, more modern, and they are getting to be the beast. Now they are now that
they own the space now. And they keep adding more and more things on I love these AI apps don't get me wrong, but they have to stay nimble with all the things they're doing and adding on they are at risk of becoming that same overloaded LMS in you know, Blackboard that everybody stressed out about. And I've heard more people who use Canvas on a daily basis, say they just need to do need to keep updating, they need to keep moving. So yeah, incredibly
exciting. If they put it together, and it makes sure their core you UX is amazing. I think they will continue to run the table and be an amazing platform for all of these AI tools. usable, informative, couldn't agree more. I think the other thing to say about nguzo is that they're, you know, they have a little bit of a wolf chasing them in that their core technology, the whole the level of content technology is something that AI does
incredibly well. And several different startup AI companies are chasing Newsela saying, Hey, we can level content too. We can level any kind of content, you can put in your content, and we'll level it for you Baba Baba. That's a risk for Newsela. So they have to keep moving. They have to keep moving. They have incredible penetration. They're in almost like I think like 80, or 90% of the schools in the US is like everywhere, you know, but their moat has
just been breached. So I think it's their time to really keep moving. I love this acquisition. I'm really excited about it. The only other partnership that I would call out I'm really excited about Coursera is Career Academy. And you know, I've worked at Coursera for years, I have Coursera stocks, I want to make sure that that's out there.
But Coursera just launched this Career Academy, which is basically offering universities access to all of their career certificates, which they have now from Google, Microsoft, Mehta, Salesforce, IBM, and actually a number of others. So what they're trying to do, and this is not what Corsair used to be, is be a bridge for universities so that people can graduate from school with actual industry certificates from very
well known companies. And you know, that's been the plan for a while, but this week, they announced that they're teaming up for the University of Texas System, all nine universities, and offering this career academy to almost 250,000 learners in that Texas system. I think this is something we're gonna look back at and say, this was one of the historic moments where university and workforce really started to, you know, have a synergy that we've always wanted, but sort of nobody knew
how to find. I have heard you know, the Coursera CEO talk many times about people should be graduating college with not only a college degree but industry value certificates in cutting edge tech skills like those offered by Salesforce and Microsoft. And, you know, and of course, this is gonna include AI. So I'm pumped about that partnership, and that's fresh off the presses, we'll see where
it goes. I like this play, I think Coursera shifted from being all university to being a really great combination of university and company. And this is like the sort of icing on the cake of that decision.
Incredible analysis, Alex, and what I'm taking away from what you said, it's so interesting, because back to school is a great time to reflect on where we were a year ago. Remember, a year ago, we were talking about, like stackable credentials, and like partnerships with universities and employers and all this stuff. And we were predicting that, you know, eventually, someday, this will all go that direction. And now, almost overnight, we're seeing massive
adoption of that concept. And this kind of core notion that we were arguing that the ROI of the four year university fully locked, is no longer relevant to the vast majority of students. And we need to disaggregate it's literally happening. And by the way, listeners, if you have children, I'm sure this is also metacognitive. When you work in education, you often have to ask this question like, am I going to dog food, my own innovative stuff? Or am I going to go with
the status quo? And you know, often you'll meet this these, like, you know, schools should be this and that, and then you're like, Where does your child go, and they're like, Oh, they're like well known private school that doing. I'm telling you, if you are a parent listening, now, you need to think differently about your child's future. And it's, the four year should be one of the options, but there should be a
portfolio of options. And, you know, I for 1am going to really think about the not just the ROI, but the learning experience, like this is a huge commitment of time, energy and money for our children. And I am super excited that maybe we should have put this up in the big winners. It's like, you know, students that are looking for alternative pathways to careers, they are big winners.
All right. So let's do speaking of higher ed transformation, let's go with the biggest stories of the summer, you're our higher ed expert. For you. What was the biggest headline that you know, if you were going to look as a historian, you know, July higher ed, what's the big story?
I'll keep this one pretty brief. Because I think, you know, there's been a lot of ink spilled on this already. And it's still a story in process and progress. But it is a very big deal that the Supreme Court of the United States effectively ended, you know, race based admission, aka affirmative action, and basically have reversed it what where it has been decades of policy in higher ed to actively try to create, you know, a
diverse student body. And it's, you know, people can debate this all day long, I'm sure, you know, there's lots of listeners on either side of this, you know, of this particular issue. But it is definitely a huge story, because it's going to change a lot about how we think about that high school to college pipeline, and about, you know, what it takes to get into a school, but it's gonna have a lot of effect. And, you know, we don't even know exactly what it
looked like yet. I think, you know, schools are now starting their fall semester, and having to think about next year's admissions, there's all sorts of, you know, ideas about what they might and can do to either maintain a diverse population or do things completely differently or find different proxies for need, or I'm, who knows, and what we'll see this won't pan out. But I think this is a definitely a historic decision.
And I think people may see it as sort of the end of a particular kind of proactive civil rights era. I also think that the US Department of Ed which obviously, and the Biden administration, which totally disagreed with this decision, and we're, we're, you know, we're not even close to it. I mean, they were on the other side of it are starting to now push, as are many others to say, Well, if we can't do race based admissions, we certainly shouldn't do legacy based
admissions. And that is, you know, Virginia Tech this week just ended its legacy admissions. That is one of many schools we might see, just as all these schools have gone test optional. I think that you're going to see a domino effect and a lot of schools, ending legacy admissions, or at least limiting them, you know, in a serious way, in a public way, as a way to, you know, not be seen as an engine of inequality, which, frankly, a lot of schools already are, despite the race
based admission. So it is a weird moment. We you know, two days ago, we saw Miguel coat donor, the US education secretary, basically say, hey, you know, this ruling was wrong and too big insistence, this opens the door to ending legacy. And this should be, you know, if we're going to go meritocratic, let's go meritocratic all the way and not let people slide through. So this is going to have interesting reverberating effects. But I'd love to hear
your take on it. But I think the K 12 story is even bigger.
Yeah. I mean, look, I think my quick take is that there's going to be workarounds. And the workarounds are, you know, some schools are going to do the workout rounds, and some schools are not, but what you will find is that, what I think this signals is a shift from universities being the foundation of a liberal democracy, where you have diverse people from diverse backgrounds, coming together to build connection and kind of shape the future of your
community or country. You know, it's all around, like, what's your performance on your academics? And how do you we get you to get a job. And I just think we've, you know, essentially completed the kind of letting go of education as like, purpose built for, you know, thoughtful, liberal democracy. And that is sad. And that also dovetails to the main headlines in K 12. I'd say first, it's that you know, how it's like, what is it? Mr. Johnson goes to Washington. What's the movie?
That's just Smith? Yeah.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Well, it's mr. Washington goes to schools. And basically, the kind of fear the rules, the huge reach of politics into the classroom is unprecedented. And we're hearing stories, I'm in Slack communities where teachers are literally afraid to present lessons because they're afraid they're going to lose their job
or get sued. And by the way, there's vigilante parent, you know, communities that feel emboldened to go after a teacher if they talk about anything with race or anything that like, smells of some sort of controversial issue. It is anathema to like a functioning democracy to have that kind of fear based, you know, policy dynamic in our schools, and teachers are reeling. Meanwhile, they're also asking, What should
I do with AI? And what we basically have a new studies out are showing this is reported by the 74,000,002 thirds of teachers 63% are using chat TBT for their job. So write me a lesson plan and come up with questions give me a worksheet, give me ideas, and there's a myriad of apps. But there's no real guidance systematically for educators and students across K 12. On is chat, GBT, okay are set up in T naught and in what
use cases and so on. And, you know, we'll talk later about the AIB, some really great innovations in K 12. But it is the Wild West. And I think that makes educators somewhat uneasy. And then underlying all of this is the kind of continued drumbeat of performance results coming out that show that we are seeing huge backsliding in terms of achievement for African American, Latino, and low income students. The tutoring search post COVID is facing a funding
cliff. So it's not like tutoring is going to come in as an answer. And you know, the results are very hit and miss in terms of that. So teacher shortage to like every I was just talking to a school leader yesterday who said, the new normal is actually planning for 10 to 20% vacancy, you have to essentially have your master schedule, have the flexibility to know that at any point 10 to 20% of your teaching roles will not be filled. That is just mind blowing. So that's where we are
in K 12. As you hear that, what are your takes?
Yeah, they're all pretty negative stories, in some ways, or I wouldn't say they're totally negative. But it's an incredibly strange turning point for us. K 12. Education. I think that the combination of the pandemic, the political environment, that is sort of been exacerbated by the pandemic, and this new technology that could be you know, world changing all happening within five years, has really thrown things into disarray. You know, the teacher shortages are real, they're
everywhere. The student results have been really depressing. And you know, now it's officially like, even post COVID The scores are still far behind even potentially backsliding but for the NWA. You know, I've said this on the pod before but I hope that we can collectively especially in edtech, use this sort of crisis as an opportunity. And really think about you know, this is a system that's 100 years old, it's continued to evolve, and there's many incredible people in it.
But what would it take to sort of get to K 12? Education? 2.0? In the US? What would that look like? What does it mean for teachers? What does it mean for technology? What does it mean for, you know, outcomes for, especially in equal outcomes, I really hope we can get there. One of the most exciting, you know, AI stories in tech that I've been following pretty
closely is this. Merlin mind is a company started by the former head of IBM Watson's education division, very deep AI guy, they're basically trying to build education specific purpose built large language models, and other sort of safety tools to try to make it possible for schools to use AI without introducing all these other types of risks, which there are plenty of, and I'm really
excited about that. I think that that is part of what makes teachers uneasy, as you say, Ben, people just don't know what this thing really is, and what's going on under the hood. And you know, nobody does. But if we have some transparency, that would be amazing. I'm also really excited about Common Sense Media, launching rating systems for the AI tools that are out there, I know that that's your world, you know, then and it's really, I think
that's a big deal. We've also seen a flurry of AI reports coming about schools recently from Harvard Graduate School, from St. From, you know, and the Department of EDs, basically saying we need to keep humans in the loop for now, which I totally agree, everybody's looking for trust. So I'm optimistic about AI being able
to solve some of this. And I think in terms of the political division, and the results, and the teacher shortages, we just all have to be really creative, because the worst thing we could do is do basically the equivalent of what people did for the tutoring, you know, when the pandemic landed, which is just grab for the nearest, you know, scalable solution, and just hope, and there's a real chance of that happening right
now. So I think thoughtful, coming together of educators and technologists, and, you know, and policy makers to really think about what we want our education system to be like, I'm hoping that this is an opportunity to do that, rather than just a low point in our nation's education. I've done a lot of AI already. Do you want to talk about some of the AI stuff? Or I'd love to hear, you know, you think so much about, obviously, common sense. And that, you know, what schools
could be doing? Do you have any other thoughts? I know, we've talked about lots of different school models.
Yeah, I mean, on the AIB, here's what I would say, you know, kind of three things. One, there is the kind of Cambrian explosion that we covered in the newsletter that continues to play out. And AI is both a core engine of these some of these new companies and, you know, if you read our newsletter really talks about how that actually opens up new business models that can be incredibly profitable, and also serve niche
users. But you're also seeing it being peanut butter all over the, you know, basically, every company. And so I think, you know, it remains to be seen what the business story is for edtech. Because if the capability is across everyone, then it actually just becomes a more of a, it doesn't become a competitive mode or competitive advantage for any one player. And that's why I'm excited about the business model thing that the number two headline is, there's a big dialogue around
safety and responsibility. And I think we've moved past the kind of is AI, you know, are we going to develop super intelligence? And is human species doomed and all that stuff? You know, and the reason why that's over is it may happen, it may not happen, but the genies out of the bottle. So like, if it's gonna happen, like debates over like, hates, like, it's already too much momentum worldwide, for us to hold back. And so now it's like, okay, given that the AI genies out of the bottle, how do
we create safeguards? And I think we've had an industry that understands, for it to be successful, it has to work and partner with regulators. And so, you know, common sense launch there, you know, there's a Wall Street Journal story around the ratings and review system that common sense has, and I've got a front row seat to that. And I also think, you know, SD has a tuned model. And so there's just a lot of really good thoughtful
work on the implementation. The third thing on the AI is I think we're in a wait and see moment, generally speaking, and that's with users. And that's also with funders. And so when you have the pace of change that we've had over the past, what is it eight months since Chet GPT launched? I mean, but nine months I guess, because it was like, ended November December one. So nine months since, you know, the baby has been born.
And I think that now instead of furious adopting of new tools and the vast proliferation, users are starting to think about, okay, what are the problems that's that I have and how I use AI. And so rather than being tool centric, they're being more problem centric. And I think that's a really healthy thing, your article around open AI, what is it called? Converter? What is it where they can do? Better? You know, I use that the other day, I took a list of contacts and had it tag
contacts. I also had a colleague who uploaded a rubric, and then had it as do a first draft assessment of papers, you know, the ability to upload documents and frameworks and then apply it. It's just phenomenal capability. It's all rooted in Now, problem solving, and everyone's taking the beat to say, well, I could do this manual task. But maybe AI could help me for that. So how do I
look at that? So what I will also just say, for the bigger arc of history, what we're seeing is an AI native generation growing up in K 12. And so, you know, my seven year old at home, you know, has an AI assistant that helps him read and, you know, he talks to the it's gone from Alexa to basically every surface. Okay, and then before we close, we'll talk about the biggest funding rounds. I will say we had a really great update from bright
eye. And you know, my takeaway, did you talk about this at all, Alex? No, my big takeaway from the bright eye report is that reach is just baller man, they raised, you know, we had Jennifer Carolyn on the podcast, she kind of announced the new fund announcing the new raise, they are not letting the mosque grow, they are going for it. And they have closed five publicly described deals. But everywhere I go, I'm seeing like, reaches involved in the conversation. And that's been really exciting.
You'll also note that Alan GSV, our biggest, you know, funds, per the assets under management have been really, really quiet. And I believe that our only had one deal publicly disclosed. what that could mean is they're actually doing a lot of deals. And they're not disclosed. It could mean they're doing a lot of deals that are inside rounds
that never really go public. But I definitely think that wait and see impression that I was talking about with the AI is also creating some wait and see for some of our big funders in the space. Anything big picture on the funding environment before we just run through the folks who've raised round? Yeah,
I mean, they report called out that the UK still remains the hottest market in Europe, but that almost every country has fewer deals deals than it has in the past. They called out this my tutor source, which is Middle East in North Africa based company that raised $100 million for the first time, that's really exciting. And that hack the box out of Greece was the biggest European deal this year with 55 million, unless you count this new go student deal and consider that a funding
round rather than debt. But basically, you know, it's been quiet, but they're finding a few glimmers of real hope for the European ed tech system. And it's a generally positive reporters also interesting how Andreessen Horowitz they call out has made as many public ed tech deals as bright eye itself, which is for deals and they're one of the only non specialist investors that is still sort of in the space. Yeah, and
I know that team over there. And if you ever get a chance to read some of their blogs and lease gates puts out some really great content that connects the bigger picture themes that we're seeing in AI and new business models with education and learning. So on the biggest funding round, let's do like you go and I go, we'll just go back and forth. Yeah, sure. So Ukrainian founded promptly received 62 point 4 million euros some of the debt to expand its AI powered
language learning platform. One language learning continues to be our category winner, and that tech and number two is Slava Ukraina. Like, keep going. He's grain like, we support you.
Absolutely. The second biggest deal of the year so far through this is a secure code warrior, raised 45 million euros that's out of the UK that you know, hottest country in Europe. It's all for cybersecurity education, which is a very hot field and one that is going to continually evolve in the AI world where you can do human fishing in ways that you've never even imagined before. So that's an exciting one that Goldman Sachs and Paladin are involved with that. How about you
leverage do you raise 40 million on a one 50 million valuation in India? It's a recruitment and international talent sourcing company. Interesting that the 40 on 150 means that it was a significant chunk of equity that was taken. And we continue to see as the market climate gets tighter, offshoring international talent services, things like that I'm really exploding.
Absolutely. We saw Matilda, which is a Mexico City based company raise $19 million, including a follow on round from GSP. And they basically provide infrastructure and payments to allow private schools to really work. It's basically collection management and payment processing for private schools, which are a very big deal in Mexico and Latin America. And it's a very clever system that does all sorts of things from WhatsApp links to very modern cutting
edge technology for payments. So very, very interesting company there.
Mexico is blowing up as a LATAM. Hub. Alright, data people raised 13 million. It's a US recruitment platform. And it's got great lead in First Round Capital, but a bunch of energy around data people and collecting data and aligning that with recruitment and new markets, Venture Partners, basically anything they touch, seems to turn out in a positive direction. All right, next one.
Comey raised $12 million. And these didn't all happen this week. These are the biggest ones of the year so far. Basically, Comey is a storefront it's a UK based company, storefront for sort of celebrities and influencers, to sell products to do functionality and marketing tools. There's some education in there. I'm not sure I'd call this a Pure Edge edtech company but right i ventures which is a tech specific and ampler both
invested in it. And they have raised $17 million in a little over a year $12 million this year, to continue to expand. It's basically sort of economy software for those who thrive in the gig economy, including educators.
All right out of Germany, we had tomorrow University raising 10 million euros. It is a remote first Neo University. One thing we've always seen is the Germans are leaders in job based, practical apprenticeship type models of universities and this is one really leaning into online and distributed learning. And edgy capital is leading that round an emerging powerhouse VC in Europe.
Exactly. And last on this list is Laura l o ra that's an Israeli Tel Aviv based company raised 9.2 5 million this is a generative AI based company from the ground up that does virtual language coaching for English language learners. So that is a hot topic. It's the most learned topic in the world is the English language. And they are trying to do everything based purely from a tech first gen AI
first perspective. So we should all keep our eyes on that they just came out of stealth a few weeks ago and the end of June, to say hey, we're out there and we're going to change language learning with Gen aI had, you know put Duolingo a little bit on its heels they help. It's really interesting time for all
of edtech. And then you know one thing worth mentioning Matt tower are a close friend of the pod called out in his newsletter this month that everydayness, which is the maker of emeritus may be looking to raise over $100 million this year. It's a rumor it's not fully vetted, or you know, announced yet, but that is a very big company, very big international company sort of out of India and Singapore
has been doing very well. And if they raise that kind of money, it's probably going to be for a buying spree of different tools, maybe also AI. Well,
that is a great way to wrap up a breaking news, our hot take. It's so exciting to see where at Tech has come if you look back a year ago, and where we are today. And there are a number of real challenges in our space. Of course, you know, Alex and I, we are so excited to have you all along on the journey with us as listeners. And we're so excited for the future of education, technology and learning. And so we're back and if it happens in ed tech, you'll hear it here on
Ed Tech insiders. Thanks all for joining.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Ed Tech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more Ed Tech Insider subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.