The EdSheet Vol. 31

This newsletter covers the business side of the education industry - venture funding, M&A, other financial transactions. Whiteboard Advisors also publishes a daily newsletter - What We’re Reading - of curated, industry-focused news clips and a weekly newsletter - Whiteboard Notes - which covers policy, industry trends, and insights from W/A CEO Ben Wallerstein.

Hello! 

It was great seeing many of you in San Diego last week! Action-packed issue this week, covering:

• $1B+ in new AUM for education investment funds: A-Street and Achieve Partners closed more than $1.1B in new capital between them. A-Street's $675M Fund II (anchored by the Walton family and the Lego Foundation) will go towards investments in PK12 businesses of all sizes while Achieve Partners' $450M Fund II will focus on buyouts of workforce training companies with apprenticeship (or apprentice-like) components. The size of these two new investment vehicles marks a dramatic change for an EdTech investment landscape that has looked pretty bleak recently. 

• New models for the future of the K12 classroom: Houston ISD launched its "Future 2" schools with a pitch built around critical thinking (though there is also a sprinkling of AI), LAUSD and the UK moved to restrict screentime for young people, a Washington district vibecoded its way to $250K in EdTech savings, and "AI tutor" optimism is losing steam.

• AI reshaping the workforce: Shopify quietly scaled its internship program from 25 to 1,000 to seed AI culture across the company, FutureFit AI became Achieve Partners first Fund II investment, and AI companies are paying failed startups for their Slack data to train new models.

With that, onto the news.

Financial Transactions

Whiteboard Advisors not only provides policy and market-related diligence and advisory services, we track every financial transaction that happens in education — and keep a record of all deals that are publicly announced. You can check out the EdSheet Deal Hub here:

The following transactions caught our eye over the past few weeks. If you have a deal to announce in this newsletter, please reach out.

Venture Funding

Zum raises $100M at $1.7B valuation / US, Student Transportation Technology / TPG Rise Funds (lead)

This round brings Zum's total funding to $430M and follows the launch of its Connected Mobility Experience platform, a transportation coordination software layer for school districts. Zum now operates across 4,500+ schools in 17 states, including the Los Angeles, Boston, and San Francisco school districts. 

Gizmo raises $22M / UK, Study Tools / Shine Capital (lead), Ada Ventures, Seek Investments, GSV, NFX

Gizmo turns students' notes into gamified quizzes, flashcards, and study games. The company grew from ~300K users in 2023 to more than 13M users (across 120+ countries) today. The proceeds from this round will fund an expansion into the U.S. college market and scaling headcount from seven to around 30.

FlashPass raises $4.25M / US, Workforce Upskilling Platform / J2 Ventures (lead), Seven Stars Ventures, RiverPark Ventures, Uncommon Projects

Columbus-based FlashPass sells micro-certifications and training programs (and a soon-to-launch job-matching engine) to state governments to re-train workers. The company claims to have reached $4M in ARR in just one year of operations.

Floreo raises $1M / US, VR Autism Therapy / Cleveland Clinic

This strategic investment from the Cleveland Clinic coincides with Floreo's De Novo submission to the FDA for FloreoRx, a VR-based intervention for Autism Spectrum Disorder. Floreo's pivotal trial — one of the largest randomized studies of a VR therapy in children with autism — showed a 45.6% responder rate vs. 23.3% in the control group. If cleared, FloreoRx would be the first FDA-authorized VR autism therapy.

FutureFit AI receives strategic investment from Achieve Partners / US, Workforce Navigation Platform / Achieve Partners

FutureFit AI offers a workforce navigation and transition platform used by governments and industry associations to close talent gaps and route displaced workers into higher-wage jobs. FutureFit is well-positioned to lean into the moment workforce navigation is having right now: the EDA's Good Jobs Challenge awarded another $25M in January 2025 (pushing the portfolio to 35 states with a target of 53,000 placements), Colorado expanded its "My Colorado Journey" navigation platform alongside ~$92M in Opportunity Now grants, and Michigan's "AI and the Workforce Plan" is building out a statewide Career Portal as part of a $70B economic-impact blueprint. The investment — led by Achieve Partners, who just announced their own new investment fund (see below) — will help the company scale up to support opportunities like these.

M&A

CENTEGIX acquires Pikmykid / US, School Safety Platform

This deal combines CENTEGIX's emergency response system with Pikmykid's dismissal, visitor management, attendance, and reunification products. Pikmykid reports serving more than 7,000 schools across all 50 states and growth of 25–30% year-over-year.

Coursedog acquires ClassRanked / US, Higher Education Operations Software

ClassRanked, a modern course evaluations tool built for colleges and universities, will become the Course Evaluations product inside Coursedog's Assessment Cloud — connecting student feedback on teaching directly to curriculum, scheduling, and accreditation workflows. As part of the deal, ClassRanked founder Hayden Hall will join Coursedog to lead the Assessment Cloud group. This transaction marks Coursedog’s first acquisition since their $90M funding round in 2023.

Buyouts

Inspirit Capital acquires Kaplan Languages Group / United Kingdom / United States, Language Learning

UK-based carveout specialist Inspirit Capital is buying Kaplan Languages Group (KLG) — which includes Kaplan International Languages, Alpadia, Azurlingua, and ESL Education — from Kaplan. KLG operates 20+ language schools across eight countries and facilitates language-learning-related travel to 200+ destinations.

New Capital

A-Street raises $675M Fund II / US, PK12

A-Street's second fund brings the firm's total platform to $1B+ ($325M for Fund I, $675M raised so far for Fund II), which will continue to back PK12 companies. The Walton family, who anchored A-Street’s first fund, returned as LPs alongside the Lego Foundation, who have made this fund their largest-scale impact investment to date, and others.

Achieve Partners closes $450M Workforce Fund II / US, Workforce Development

Fund II is more than double the size of Achieve's first workforce fund, indicating that the market for apprenticeship-style talent development models continues to grow despite concerns over AI-driven disruption in the labor market. The firm plans to continue to deploy into high-growth, talent-starved sectors like behavioral health, biotech, cloud migration, data centers, and energy, with apprenticeship programs built into each acquired company.

News of Note

This section is intended to be more exploratory, a reflection of stories, ideas, and trends that I think are important for EdTech executives and investors to be aware of. 

Early Childhood

• Early intervention services for young children boost later test scores.

K12

• The future of K12 classrooms has been top-of-mind the past few weeks. Some of that is ASU+GSV fever, but my reading has skewed towards school operations more than traditional “EdTech” classroom tools. 

  • To start, school district turnaround artist and current Houston ISD superintendent Mike Miles announced the launch of two “Future 2” schools. If you read between the lines, the structure of these schools sounds pretty similar to Alpha School with one notable departure – the narrative is built around Critical Thinking and freeing students from archaic school schedules rather than “AI.”

    • Meanwhile, other school administrators continue to grasp at straws to enroll and retain students, turning to TikTok to combat increased competition for students. 

    • And, perhaps aided by the proliferation of school choice policies, the market for higher-end private schools may be growing faster than we realize. Florida’s billionaires want more private schools, so they’re building their own. Of note, this group of billionaires building schools includes none other than WeWork founder Adam Neumann.

  • Other parts of K12 schools getting a dose of AI: 

    • WA school district vibecodes its way to $250K in EdTech savings. I expect more and more of these stories to emerge over the next ~18 months, and would caveat all of them that third-party software subscriptions are often just as much about liability protection as they are software’s functionality.

    • Schools are now employing drones to stop mass shootings 

    • And, BusPatrol’s automated ticketing system is coming under scrutiny for their revenue-sharing model and limited impact on actual traffic violations near school buses.

• Things are shifting in and around the classroom too. LAUSD approved major restrictions on screentime in schools during lunch and recess. The UK went a step further, recommending no screens for kids under 2, and severely limited screentime for kids age 2-5.

• Meanwhile, states are learning the wrong lesson from the Mississippi Miracle.

• And, the dream of the AI tutor falls into the valley of despair. Sal Khan reflects on Khanmigo’s struggles.

  • Dan Meyer pulls no punches on the topic of Khanmigo. Importantly, he pairs this criticism with his vision for the future of the classroom. (An exercise I wish more detractors would undertake.) 

Higher Ed

• New models are emerging in Higher Ed too, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not:

  • In India, Infosys continues to grow its internal university.

  • While in the US, students are speedrunning through online degrees in weeks.

    • Related, competency-based education and AI are like tuna fish and hot fudge. A little alarmist for my taste, but a visceral analogy nonetheless

• Among more traditional institutions, the Ivies continue to wrestle with their place in the world. Yale blames Ivy League for declining trust in higher ed.

• While smaller schools continue to wrestle for survival. Hampshire College to close.

• Apropos of small schools, International students remade a college. What happens when they’re gone?

  • And, how loan caps might affect graduate degree borrowers this fall.

Workforce

• AI natives are entering the workforce. It’s complicated. One key detail the article highlights that I missed last year: Shopify, known for being on the leading edge of AI adoption, scaled their internship program from 25 to 1,000 students to help inculcate a culture of AI use across the organization. The results varied, but the intent was clear.

• Will anyone in England take up the lifelong learning entitlement? England, and Europe more broadly, have often led the way on new funding models for education (one notable recent example being the apprenticeship levy). The lifelong learning entitlement, which English citizens will be able to use to take postsecondary courses throughout their adult life, is a new model worth following.

• The new startup liquidation asset: their Slack data. Training AI on failed startups feels a little counterintuitive, but, shrug.

Other

• Many (many) posts covering GSV takeaways, including my own write-up in last week’s edition of Whiteboard Notes. Rebecca Winthrop’s won best overall.

  • And Andy Rotherham won “best pithy phrase about AI” with “the weather doesn’t care what you think.”

• DOJ delays website accessibility compliance rules by 1 year. These accessibility requirements, covered in detail by my W/A colleague Thomas Rodgers and by Higher Ed analyst Phil Hill, have been a cause of great distress among K12 and Higher Ed institutions (and other public entities) for the past 2 years. This distress remains, but implementation timelines will now have more latitude. 

Looking for your next opportunity in education? Check out our W/A Jobs, which features 4,029 career opportunities from 317 organizations across the education industry. A few roles that we’re excited about from the past week:

• CodePath is hiring a Senior Director of Curriculum to lead curriculum strategy as the computer science nonprofit scales its industry-aligned CS courses across college campuses and into the AI era

• Guild Education is hiring a Principal Product Operations Manager, Grow to drive roadmap execution across Guild's career advancement platform for frontline workers as the company builds out its AI-era upskilling offerings

• Odyssey is hiring a Senior/Lead Product Managerto shape product strategy at the Series A K-12 fintech powering state-funded education savings account programs

Whiteboard Advisors is the leading policy-related diligence partner for education investors, advising on most major private equity transactions in education over the past 15 years. Our specialty is translating complex policy dynamics into insights that inform decision-making. Reply to this email to learn more.