Course Hero Inc, a leading education platform that enables college students and educators to contribute and access academic resources, announced that it has raised $380M in a Series C funding round.
The round was led by Wellington Management with participation from new investors Sequoia Capital Global Equities, OMERS Growth Equity, and D1 Capital Partners, and existing investors including, GSV Ventures, NewView Capital, SuRo Capital, TPG, and Valiant Peregrine Fund.
With the new funding, the startup plans to accelerate its goal of building a rich and dynamic learning ecosystem to meet the evolving range of study needs for today’s learners.
Founded in 2006, Course Hero is an online learning platform for course-specific study resources. The platform supports students on their unique learning journey as they seek help and resources to better understand their coursework, prepare for exams, learn and remember. Students can subscribe or contribute their own resources to access millions of learning materials including practice problems, study guides, textbooks solutions, and step-by-step explanations for every subject.
Course Hero is on a mission to help students graduate confident and prepared. Its growing community of higher education faculty shares the goals of helping students to learn and succeed in their studies.
Talking about the platform, Andrew Grauer, Co-Founder & CEO of Course Hero, said,
“The learning and teaching environment in which Course Hero operates has expanded and evolved significantly over the past 15 years. Learners’ lives — and their learning needs — have since become more complex, more diverse, and more continuous. We are committed to supporting these rapidly changing learning and teaching needs by expanding into new verticals, tools, and services. We are pleased to have the backing of such well-known and well-respected investors to continue building an ecosystem of mission- and values-aligned learning businesses.”
The Course Hero portfolio also includes CliffsNotes, the original and iconic study guide company, LitCharts, a creator of literature resources, QuillBot, an AI-powered platform helping people improve their writing skills, and Symbolab, a pioneering developer of AI for Mathematics Education.
Aneesh Venkat, Partner at Sequoia Capital Global Equities, has said,
“We believe online learning platforms will continue to play an essential role in supplementing the student learning and educator teaching experience in today’s learning economy. With lifelong learning trending upward, we expect resources like Course Hero will continue to grow, moving beyond the traditional college student pursuing a credential. Course Hero is a truly unique player in this environment, not only for their values-led approach to partnering with and acquiring companies, but also in how they operate and collaborate with educators to support better learning practices.”
Course Hero claims to have more than 80,000 faculty across the United States, Canada, and Australia who joined the community to share their resources, collaborate with other faculty, and hone strategies for instruction. With its headquarters in Redwood City, California, the startup has office hubs throughout the US, Canada, Israel, and India.
With the combination of product innovation and a strategic yet values-centered approach to acquisitions, Course Hero believes that the company is in a unique position to help anyone learn better, faster, and more affordably.
Course Hero had last raised $70 million in September last year in Series B extension round. The startup’s latest funding brings its total valuation to $3.6 billion.
