Top 20 edtech startups
2021-09-08
Confido
12 minutes
The growth of digital learning has skyrocketed over the last year, for obvious reasons. The coronavirus pandemic has ignited change in many industries, including early years and adult learning.
According to a recent PWC Venture Survey, 83% of venture investors now see edtech as the sector with the greatest opportunity for growth.
In fact, global edtech investment is on track to grow by 15% in 2020, a predicted €6.4 billion.
Here are our top 20 edtech startups...
For kids
About: Third Space Learning are the largest provider of 1-to-1 maths tutor support in the UK. Their goal is to make one to one maths tuition accessible to those children with the greatest need. Since 2013, they’ve helped improve educational outcomes for 90,739 pupils in 2,852 schools.
Location: London
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: Third Space Learning has raised a total of £12.3m in funding over four rounds. Their latest funding was raised in July 2020 from a Series A round.
About: For secondary schools, Sparx Maths is a complete solution that supports teachers in planning, delivering and reviewing both lessons and homework throughout Key Stage 3 and GCSE. Benefits for school leaders, teachers and students range from personalised learning for every student, a unique bookwork check feature and incredible real-time insights into class and student progress for teachers.
Location: USA
Company size: 1 to 10 employees
Funding: Sparx has raised a total of €22m in funding over one round. This round was raised in September 2019.
About: Atom Learning believe students of all backgrounds and attainment levels should experience the benefits of personalised education. They combine the highest quality teacher-produced content with adaptive technology for a personalised and impactful learning experience. Their solutions are used both at home and in schools, as they lead the way in modernising education globally.
Location: London
Company size: 51 to 100 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: MEL Science offer virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) science lessons for kids aged 5-16+. Their subscription-based service provides a mix of physics and chemistry lab sets for practical experiements, alongside VR programs.
Location: London
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: MEL Science has raised a total of $26.7m in funding over four rounds. Their latest funding was raised in December 2020 from a Series B round.
About: Stemi is an edtech company that aims to accelerate high-tech workforce development by radically reducing the time needed to transfer relevant skills and industry knowledge into educational systems. They help middle schools and high schools around the world to transform their classrooms into innovation labs where students can experience hands-on projects emulating real-world practices.
Location: Croatia
Company size: 1 to 10 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: Kano is computing for a new generation. They create the bestselling and best-known computers for creativity and learning. Their products are buildable, transparent, and fun for all ages. Ranked more innovative than Google and Microsoft by Fast Company – they collaborate with company and product leadership at Microsoft, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and more. They make technology accessible to anyone, not just the 1% of 1%.
Location: London
Company size: 51 to 100 employees
Funding: Kano has raised a total of $45.5m in funding over nine rounds. Their latest funding was raised in July 2020 from a Corporate Round.
About: Lingumi helps you learn to speak English with your child using an app, for kids ages 2-6. The lessons are designed by teachers and delivered through technology using interactive learning games, AI voice technology, and confidence-boosting tasks.
Location: London
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: Lingumi has raised a total of £5.7m in funding over three rounds. Their latest funding was raised in March 2020 from a Series A round.
About: Filisia builds accessible IoT devices, iPad applications and machine learning tools for learning and therapy. Cosmo provides creative learning for people with Special Education Needs and Disabilities. This award-winning system changes how early years learners and young people with SEND train their physical, cognitive and communication skills.
Location: London
Company size: 1 to 10 employees
Funding: Filisia has raised a total of $55.8k in funding over three rounds. Their latest funding was raised in August 2016 from a Grant round.
About: The female-led Finnish startup Kide Science was founded in 2017 by a researcher, a science teacher and an entrepreneur. Their learning model combines play, story, imagination and science process skills for an engaging STEAM experience.
Location: Finland
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: Kide Science has raised a total of €2.7m in funding over three rounds. Their latest funding was raised in May 2020 from a Seed round.
About: Mrs Wordsmith is on a mission to become every child's most-loved English teacher. They’re doing it by creating learning experiences like no other. Mrs Wordsmith works with the brightest minds from the worlds of education, gaming, and animation to create their range of science-backed, blended learning resources that kids love.
Location: London
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: Mrs Wordsmith has raised a total of $15.1m in funding over three rounds. Their latest funding was raised in December 2019 from an Equity Crowdfunding round.
For adults
About: FutureLearn helps you Learn 100% online with world class universities and industry experts. Develop hobbies, new skills and career-changing expertise with their flexible courses.
Location: London
Company size: 51 to 100 employees
Funding: FutureLearn has raised a total of £50m in funding over one round. This was a Corporate Round raised in April 2019.
About: Touch Surgery helps surgeons and health systems deliver consistent and high-quality surgery through AI, data and visualization. The Touch Surgery ecosystem consists of mobile-based education, as well as data and analytics. Their app, the world’s first academically validated mobile-based cognitive simulator, allows surgeons, trainees and patients alike to train, prepare and better understand surgical steps.
Location: London
Company size: 101 to 250 employees
Funding: Unknown
About: Memrise is an award-winning language learning system with over 50 million users. Specialising in combining cognitive science, powerful tech and entertaining content, Memrise makes language learning genuinely recreational. They offer 200 language combinations across 24 languages on their website, iOS and Android apps.
Location: London
Company size: 51 to 100 people
Funding: Memrise has raised a total of $21.8m in funding over seven rounds. Their latest funding was raised in June 2018 from a Series B round.
About: Digital coaching platform providing personalised coaching and professional development for employees to help advance their careers. They have coaches from around the world and an App which allows for live video coaching sessions.
Location: Berlin
Company size: 501 to 1,000
Funding: CoachHub has raised a total of $133m in funding over three rounds. Their latest funding was raised in September 2021 from a Series B round.
About: Perlego was born to provide an affordable (and sustainable) textbook solution for learners around the world, by partnering with publishers and removing the costs of print, distribution, and retail markup.
Location: London
Company size: 51 to 100 employees
Funding: Perlego has raised a total of $15m in funding over five rounds. Their latest funding was raised in November 2019 from a Series A round.
About: PushFar is a world-leading mentoring software and technology company, helping thousands of individuals and hundreds of organisations with mentoring. They run an open mentoring platform, where anyone can sign up free to find a mentor, volunteer to mentor others, network, connect and develop their career, with a whole host of career progression tools and techniques.
Location: London
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: PushFar has raised a total of £405k in funding over two rounds. Their latest funding was raised in April 2020 from a Seed round.
About: Knoma offers a finance solution and marketplace for lifelong learning. They are tackling the digital skills gap as the global economy shifts into the fourth industrial revolution. They help people looking to future proof their career or move into new areas of work by reducing the barrier of payment and removing the pain point of sourcing technical courses.
Location: London
Company size: 1 to 10 employees
Funding: Knoma has raised a total of $28m in funding over three rounds. Their latest funding was raised in October 2020 from a Series A round.
About: Qoorio is a marketplace for professional knowledge. A place where you can book video calls, meetups and talks with knowledgeable people you admire to get advice on just about anything. In a shape of authentic storytelling about personal learning experiences and findings, Qoorio was created to help you learn faster, tell your story better while connecting with other humans more efficiently.
Location: Lithuania
Company size: 1 to 10 employees
Funding: Qoorio has raised a total of €2m in funding over one round. This was a Pre-Seed round raised in November 2019.
About: Lingopie's mission is to empower 100's of millions of users globally to learn languages by doing what they already love to do everyday. With Lingopie, language learners get access to 1000's of hours of blockbuster foreign TV shows and movies from all around the world. Each show is offered with a layer of interactive language learning tools and features that turns any episode into a language lesson. The product leverages Natural Language Processing and behavioral analytics to create a rich and immersive binge-learning experience.
Location: Israel
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: Lingopie's latest funding was raised in March 2020 from a Seed round.
Location: Code First Girls has become the largest provider of free coding courses for women in the UK, having delivered over £20 million worth of free technology education and teaching three times as many women to code as the entire UK university undergraduate system!
Location: London
Company size: 11 to 50 employees
Funding: Unknown
We want to do everything we can to help support these fantastic edtech businesses and the work they’re doing.
If you belong to a tech for good startup and want to have a chat about how we could scale your Product or Tech teams, do get in touch at contact@confidotalent.com.
Have we missed your favourites? Let us know on Twitter or LinkedIn, we’d love to hear from you!
Funding information taken from Crunchbase.