The EdSheet Vol. 34

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!

Lots to cover in this edition, headlined by:

• BibliU raises $55M: The company also announced that it had passed $100M in annual revenues, marking a much-needed win for the venture-backed EdTech space.

• The post-ChatGPT shakeout takes shape: Centrical joins Multiverse in raising a growth equity round to sustain new, AI-enabled growth while Skillsoft sold its Global Knowledge business unit for ~90% less than what they paid in 2020 to re-focus their product development efforts.

• Hellman and Friedman bets big on live events: The PE giant takes over Hyve, the parent company of Bett and ASU+GSV.

With that, onto the news!

Funding / M&A

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 our Deals Database 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

BibliU raises $55M  / United States, Course Materials Provider / BlackRock (lead), Stonehage Fleming

BibliU represents one of relatively few venture-backed breakouts in the EdTech industry over the past 5 years, building a $100M+ ARR business through a combination of strategic insight, practical operations, and savvy M&A. Founded in 2014, the company began its journey aggregating “digital textbooks” from traditional publishers and selling directly to students. During COVID, the company pivoted to selling its content platform to universities, providing the company with deeper insights into how universities manage the highly-decentralized content selection, acquisition, and re-sale process. All of which (not to mention a growing institutional preference for inclusive access content models) set the stage for the company’s 2023 acquisition of Texas Book Company, an operator of college bookstores across the US. I was a fan of this merger when it was announced and the thesis for it continues to bear out: the company’s integrated campus store and course materials platform now counts 100+ institutional partners in 30 states and 100%+ compound annual growth over the past 2 years.

Centrical raises $39M  / Israel, Talent Management Platform / Leeds Illuminate (lead), Kingfisher Investment, JVP

Centrical develops software that helps large enterprises manage, train, coach, and evaluate the performance of both human employees and AI agents, mostly in sales and customer service roles. This funding round, alongside Multiverse’s $70M round we discussed in the last EdSheet, marks a trend we’ll see more of over the next ~12 months: companies that raised significant funding pre-ChatGPT that are now coming out the other side of AI-enabled transformations. (These transformations are catnip for market analysts like me because they directly reflect how AI is changing product preferences at educational institutions and large enterprises.) Proceeds from this round will fund Centrical’s product development and continued go-to-market expansion in the US.

Coachbetter raises $8M  / Switzerland, Extracurricular Activities Software Platform / Brighteye Ventures, Swiss Founders Fund, ZEN11

Coachbetter is building an operating system for amateur and youth soccer clubs, offering an integrated toolset for practice scheduling, parent communication, payment processing, and club administration. Proceeds from this round will fund further product development and deeper partnerships with the management teams at English Premier League runner-up Manchester City and Germany’s Borussia Dortmund.

Edumentors raises $4M  / United Kingdom, Online Tutoring Marketplace / Yazan Al Homsi

Edumentors offers an online tutoring marketplace to students in the UK, with services provided from tutors that attended (and top grades from) elite British universities. The platform claims to have delivered over 200,000 hours of tutoring since its founding in 2021. Funds will be used to expand operations and continue product development.

Maka Kids raises $3M  / United States, Content Provider / Michigan Rise (lead), Union Heritage Ventures, Flybridge, Detroit Venture Partners, Also Capital

Maka Kids is a streaming app for children ages 0-6. The platform is built without recommendation algorithms, autoplay, or ads and each piece of content is screened against 650+ developmental indicators developed with researchers from Yale’s Child Study Center. Scaling a children’s media platform is hard. But, Maka Kids’ founders are not strangers to this challenge, having already built Nabu, a nonprofit children’s book publisher that has reached 15M kids. 

Envoke raises £1.6M (~$2M)  / United Kingdom, Lab Simulation & Training / NPIF-Mercia Equity Finance, Finance Yorkshire, Foresight Group

Envoke offers virtual simulation software for medical laboratories — digital replicas of complex lab equipment used for remote operator training and troubleshooting. Clients include Bio-Rad, ThermoFisher Scientific, PacBio, the NHS, the Mayo Clinic, and Hawaii's national blood laboratories; the platform reduces service call-outs by 15-20%. The Leeds-based company is on course to exceed £1M ARR in the next 12 months and plans to use the funding to expand into Asia-Pacific markets; total raised to date is over £4M.

Edvisor.ai raises $1.3M  / United States, HED Courseware Platform / Draper Associates

Edvisor.ai is an AI courseware platform for college faculty that generates interactive course materials from a syllabus upload. Founded in 2024, the company claims to serve 50+ institutions — concentrated in community colleges and public universities.

M&A

HCA Healthcare acquires The College of Health Care Professions  / United States, Allied Health Training

HCA Healthcare — which operates 189 hospitals across 19 states — is acquiring the College of Health Care Professions (CHCP), one of Texas's largest allied healthcare training providers, enrolling more than 8,000 students annually across 10 campuses in programs including medical assisting, sonography, and surgical technology. The deal extends HCA's education portfolio, which already includes Galen College of Nursing (25 campuses), Research College of Nursing, and HCA Florida Mercy College of Nursing. Financial terms were not disclosed and the transaction is still subject to regulatory approval.

EL Education and Cognia merge  / United States, K12 Accreditation & Curriculum

K12 accreditor and assessment provider Cognia — which serves 40,000 schools in more than 100 countries — is acquiring EL Education, a widely-adopted English Language Arts provider in the US. The combined organization will operate under the Cognia name but retain the EL Education brand for curriculum and professional development products, with EL's offerings now available to Cognia's full global school network. The deal is expected to close by September 1 pending regulatory approval; financial terms were not disclosed.

Nord Anglia acquires Mont'Kiara International School  / Malaysia / United Kingdom, International K12 Schools

Nord Anglia Education is adding Mont'Kiara International School in Kuala Lumpur — an IB World School serving 700+ students from 45+ countries — to its 89-school global network in August 2026. The acquisition provides Nord Anglia with a second Kuala Lumpur campus alongside the British International School of Kuala Lumpur, which Nord Anglia acquired in 2017.

Aeries Software acquires ActivityHero  / United States, K12 Student Information Systems

Aeries Software, a student information system (SIS) used by school districts in California and Texas, has acquired ActivityHero, a marketplace and management platform for extracurricular programs. The combination connects school data with after-school and enrichment program enrollment data, giving districts visibility into what Aeries calls "the whole child." 

Buyouts

Hellman & Friedman acquires Hyve Group  / United Kingdom, B2B Events

H&F is acquiring Hyve Group from Providence Equity and Searchlight Capital in a deal that puts the most prominent events business in education under a new financial sponsor. Hyve's portfolio includes B2B-focused events in a number of verticals, but is best known in the education industry for their Bett events series and the ASU+GSV Summit (acquired just last year). The company reports 3 consecutive years of double-digit organic revenue growth and now exceeds $100M in EBITDA. H&F's investment thesis is that face-to-face professional events will continue to grow more valuable and is already investing in growth – the organization announced the launch of the Bett USA this morning, which will focus on bringing K12 educators together on an annual basis.

Enduring Ventures acquires Skillsoft's Global Knowledge business  / United States, IT & Workforce Training

Skillsoft is selling its Global Knowledge instructor-led training business to Enduring Ventures for $10M upfront plus up to $8M in deferred payments. While Skillsoft’s rationale for the transaction is fairly logical, “strengthen[ing their] ability to concentrate investment, innovation, and resources on our AI-native skills management platform”, the deal represents a massive writedown of the Global Knowledge business which Skillsoft acquired for $233M as part of the same SPAC transaction that took the company public. 

Pelican Capital invests in Steplab  / United Kingdom, Teacher Professional Development

Steplab is a professional development platform used by 200,000+ teachers at 2,900+ schools. Steplab offers instructional coaching, lesson observation, secure video capture, school analytics, and more in its professional development product suite. The balance sheet capital provided from this transaction will fund further hiring, research, product development, and international expansion.

The fourth annual Solutions Summit, co-hosted by Whiteboard Advisors and ISTE+ASCD, takes place Sunday, June 28 in Orlando, Florida, ahead of the co-located ISTELive and ASCD Annual Conference — bringing together education executives, product leaders, philanthropists, and entrepreneurs committed to driving meaningful innovation in teaching and learning. This year's programming will look at where AI in education is actually headed (with a keynote on reimagining human connection in the age of AI), feature candid conversations on product impact (including how to talk about evidence with education leaders and an evidence hackathon), and examine the market signals shaping the next era of EdTech — funding shifts, compliance pressures, outcomes-based contracting, and what's emerging beyond the U.S. market.

What’s on your Whiteboard?

iDesign CEO Paxton Riter on the future of instructional design and OPM models in higher education.

News of Note

Early Childhood

• New Mexico made headlines last year as the first state to fund universal childcare. Fairly or not, the state will now also be the first to navigate scrutiny in implementing a universal childcare program: how to screw up universal childcare.

• Meanwhile, other states are taking notes on New Mexico’s program while building out their own: Connecticut invests $320 million in its early childhood education endowment.

K12

• In a dramatic turn from last year’s tech-forward partnerships with Microsoft and OpenAI, AFT President Randi Weingarten backs crackdown on classroom technology, AI restrictions, and a tax on Big Tech.

• In fairness, 9 of the AFT’s 10 proposed principles are grounded in fairly moderate perspectives. This is a consistent theme with AI-related content, where the rhetoric jumps so far ahead of the topic that it becomes hard to discuss. Which made it heartening to read a profile of the first “AI high school,” whose conclusion was that the school was  “surprisingly human.”

• Also very human, our need for more sleep. Especially in childhood. The benefits of a later school bell.

• And our need for more human connection. In Michigan, researchers found that one of the most impactful interventions for raising attendance rates was frequent home visits.

• Which, while not directly related, might also help both parents and students better understand their report cards. Unfortunately, 9 in 10 parents believe their child is performing at or above grade level in reading and math while only ~30% of students are actually doing so.

• Related to poor reading and math scores, is Pokemon the culprit? My son's math homework is essentially just Pokemon. 

• As a child of the 90s, I am tempted to defend Pokemon’s mathematically complex turn-based RPG combat system, but the real takeaway is that everyone in EdTech should show their cards – documenting where screen use is being used for instructional purposes, where it is being used for fun, and where it is being used off-script.

Higher Ed

• The most important theme in higher education today is differentiation. There is a small cohort of “elite” universities and a small cohort of “mega” universities and ~3,900 universities between them trying to gain or maintain even a small recruiting edge. 

• The easiest way to watch this trend is to monitor spending on football and basketball, which has supported enrollment growth at institutions of all different types, from Alabama to Grand Canyon to Adrian College. But there are many other ways to differentiate, including:

  • Religious affiliation: while many small Christian colleges are closing down, others are just getting started. More megachurches want to be your alma mater.

  • Or, being “AI-first” like the new Khan-Ted Institute.

  • Or, going deep on a vocation, like farming. As farming goes high tech, universities grow new types of agriculture degrees.

  • Or, going deep on an age group, like…retirees? Goucher College is recruiting new students in their 80s (at full tuition prices).

  • Or, just being “weird.” St. John's College is weird. Maybe yours should be more like it.

• Not on my list of ways to differentiate: offering low first-year tuition and then raising prices after. The college financial aid bait-and-switch.

Workforce

• More governments are gearing up policy initiatives to combat the potential for AI-driven job losses. California Governor Gavin Newsom to sign Executive Order aimed at A.I. Job loss.

• Which means companies will start gearing up their own economic mobility initiatives. Starting with the major model providers: OpenAI announces a $250M funding commitment “to grants, partnerships, and direct work aimed at building secure and abundant economic futures.”

• All of which asks the question: where are all the good jobs going to be? As AI model development enters its recursive era, the answer might be at industrial companies rather than at traditional software companies.

Data

• Harris Williams’ K12 Education Technology Report for Q2 2026

Looking for your next opportunity in education? Check out our W/A Jobs, which features 3,727 career opportunities from 318 organizations across the education industry. A few roles that we’re excited about from the past week:

• BibliU is hiring a Regional Manager (North Carolina) to oversee its growing portfolio of campus store operations across the state — cited as a key growth region in the company’s recent funding round (see above for more details on the round).

• Amplify is hiring a Senior Director, AI Transformation to lead the company's internal AI strategy — embedding AI into operations, productivity tools, and business processes — at the K-12 curriculum and literacy company.

• Uncharted Learning is hiring a Member Development Manager to build and execute smart, strategic plans to grow the company’s member base in California and on the West Coast.

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.