Emeritus, an education tech platform for online courses, has raised $650 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund 2 and Silicon Valley venture capital firm Accel.
Other existing investors of Emeritus include the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – a charity owned by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan – and Sequoia Capital India Advisors.
The Singapore-headquartered company said it was now valued at $3.2 billion, quadrupling its valuation from the last funding round in August 2020.
SoftBank has made several big investments in the sector, including in South Korea’s AI tutorial startup Riiid and Class Technologies, which makes tools that can be used with teleconferencing programs made by Zoom Video Communications.
Emeritus is similar to Silicon Valley EdTech company Coursera, but the class sizes are much smaller and more interactive, said co-founder and CEO Ashwin Damera.
The bulk of Emeritus’ business is in courses for alternative credentials, but universities also use the technology to offer degrees or partial degrees, said Damera.
Emeritus will use the funding round for the recent $200 million acquisition of iD Tech, a platform for teaching science and technology to youth students, as well as to develop new courses and expand the company’s business and geographical footprint. It has already delivered courses to 250,000 individuals across over 80 countries.
Emeritus works with over 50 universities in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, India and China.
