Coursera, the global learning platform that provides life-transforming learning experiences to anyone, anywhere, has raised $130 million in Series F round of funding, the company has announced recently.
The round was led by NEA and joined by existing investors including Kleiner Perkins, SEEK Group, Learn Capital, SuRo Capital Corp, and G Squared, according to the company.
Founded by two Stanford professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, Coursera provides universal access to the world’s best education by partnering with universities and organizations to offer courses online. It is now a leading online learning platform for higher education, with over 65 million learners from around the world coming to learn various skills of the future. More than 200 of the world’s top universities and industry educators partner with Coursera to offer courses, specialisations, certificates, and degree programs. The company claims, to date, it has partnered with more than 2,300 companies, including over 100 Fortune 500 organizations on their skills development goals.
Announcing the funding and its plans to use the new capital, Coursera CEO, Jeff Maggioncalda, wrote in a blog post,
“As millions of learners, thousands of campuses and companies, and hundreds of governments turn to our platform, it’s important that we continue to stay well-resourced to serve the world at a particularly challenging time. We will use the additional funding to double down on our product and engineering efforts, expand our job-relevant catalog, and further grow our international presence. In particular, it gives us the flexibility to meet the considerable demand for two of our COVID-focused initiatives – Campus Response Initiative to help universities teach impacted students and Workforce Recovery Initiative to help governments reskill unemployed workers.”
Stating that the jobs of the future will be powered by a highly-skilled and distributed workforce, collaborating virtually to deliver value, the CEO said Coursera, along with its community of partners, has been at the forefront of preparing individuals and institutions for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He further said that the need to develop skills for a digital future is even more apparent now and that Coursera is there to enable its community of educators, enterprise learning leaders, and government partners in their efforts in every possible way.
Coursera has recently partnered with the government of Telangana and Odisha to train 50,000 unemployed youth in each state during the COVID-19 crisis. According to the initiative, both Telangana Academy for Skill and Knowledge (TASK) and Odisha Skills Development Authority (OSDA) will make Coursera’s 3,800 courses available to 50,000 unemployed youths each across their respective state. Coursera has also recently launched its Global Skills Index 2020, providing an in-depth look at the state of skills around the world.
Meanwhile, the CEO said that the latest funding has taken the company’s cash balance to more than $300 million.
