The EdSheet Vol. 36

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!

Happy 4th of July weekend to those in the US. For everyone else, happy H2! Here’s what we’re covering in today’s EdSheet:

• ETS acquires ACT: Two of the largest names in standardized testing become one organization reaching ~35M people a year — and a symbol of testing's broader comeback at selective colleges.

• Handshake acquires Uplimit: The early-career network's AI-training business has been dramatically outgrowing its legacy platform; Uplimit is the bridge between the two.

• A tough couple of weeks for AI optimists in education: Norway banned AI in classrooms until age 14, the NYT went deep on AI cheating, and a boom in teacher pay in districts near new data centers received mixed reviews.

• PLUS: A deep dive into Achieve Partners’ new $450M buyout fund with Managing Director Ryan Craig

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

Fika Jobs raises $4M / Sweden, Recruiting Platform / Luminar Ventures (lead), Alliance VC

Fika Jobs endeavors to replace the résumé with a roughly 10-minute, AI-run video interview. Using the interview video, the platform generates a short-form candidate profile for employers to review. The platform is free for job seekers; employers pay 10% of a successful hire's first-year salary. Founded by brothers Jakob and Alexander Dubois, the pre-seed round also drew backing from Candy Crush co-founders Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi ahead of their launch in Sweden this fall.

ProLearn raises $3.15M / India, Test Prep (K12 Tutoring) / BEENEXT (lead), Eximius Ventures, Antler

ProLearn raised this pre-seed round to build a conversational tutor for India’s JEE and NEET entrance exams, with future aims to include K12 students more broadly. Founder Ravneet Singh previously held an executive role at venture-backed tutoring provider Vedantu. Proceeds from this round will fund the company's product roadmap, curriculum content, and hiring ahead of their public launch.

Sirius Game raises €1.3M / Italy, Game-Based Learning /CDP (lead), Trentino Invest, Ultra VC, 28Digital, Add Value

Italian startup Sirius Game builds game-based learning products for both schools and corporate training, built on a thesis that learning in both settings is too passive to stick. The round - led by Italy's state-backed investor CDP - coincides with the launch of JOY, a primary school product developed with publisher Gruppo Editoriale La Scuola and the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. CEO and co-founder Laura Cesaro says the capital will fund product development and expansion across Italian and international school systems and the corporate segment.

M&A

ETS acquires ACT / US, Assessment

This deal combines two of the largest names in standardized testing into one organization that reaches ~35M people each year. The deal puts a quick end to ACT’s time as a private equity-backed organization, having been taken private by Nexus Capital just over 2 years ago. Of even greater note, the deal should also serve as a symbol for the broader return of testing requirements at selective colleges. (Of note, Nexus Capital will retain control of ACT’s enrollment management subsidiary Encoura.) 

Wiley acquires Emerald for $452M / US (UK), Publishing

Wiley (NYSE: WLY) acquired UK-based Emerald Publishing from Cambridge Information Group for $452M (£337M) in cash, adding nearly 500 journals and 8,000 book titles and pushing Wiley's journal portfolio to roughly 2,500 titles. Emerald brings roughly $85M in revenue to Wiley’s topline and the company expects to eventually realize ~$30M in annual “cost synergies” from the deal.

Colibri Group acquires Audirie / US, Professional Education (Simulations)

Colibri Group, the Gridiron Capital-backed operator of 30+ professional-education brands across healthcare, accounting, real estate, and financial services, acquired Audirie, an AI simulation-and-assessment startup focused on conversational skills practice. Colibri plans to extend Audirie's simulation-based learning across its licensing, continuing education, and workforce training portfolio.

Handshake acquires Uplimit / US, Corporate Upskilling

Early-career network and AI data labelling provider Handshake has acquired Uplimit, a corporate learning platform co-founded by Coursera and GSV alum Julia Stiglitz. Handshake has been in an interesting place strategically. The company’s nascent AI-training business dramatically outgrew its legacy business as a platform connecting students and employers, with very little overlap between the two businesses. It sounds like the thesis for acquiring Uplimit is to bridge between them. Uplimit’s AI skills courses will now be offered for free to platform users, supporting their ability to perform higher-order data labelling tasks and to compete for jobs where AI literacy is a requirement.

Inspera acquires Graide / Norway (UK), Digital Assessment

Digital assessment provider Inspera — which serves 160+ institutions and processes 20M+ submissions a year — acquired UK-based Graide, whose grading engine the company claims cuts grading workloads by up to 90%. Graide will be integrated into the Inspera assessment platform and continue to be offered as a standalone tool.

OWNA Group acquires Enrolment Hub / Australia, Early Childhood Software

OWNA Group, a childcare center operations software provider, acquired Enrolment Hub, a childcare enrollment and occupancy specialist. Combined with OWNA's KindiCare unit, the organization aims to offer an end-to-end software system for early childhood providers, from marketing and enrollment to bookkeeping, staffing, and administration.

Acorn acquires B Online Learning / Australia, Corporate Learning

Acorn, a Sydney-based skills and development platform, acquired B Online Learning, an eLearning design and development shop that has been the exclusive Articulate Certified Training Partner for Australia and New Zealand since 2012 and has trained 10,000+ learning designers.

Superhuman acquires GPTZero / US, Academic Integrity

Superhuman — the productivity company formed when Grammarly acquired the eponymous email client and took its name — acquired GPTZero, an AI-detection startup originally built by a Princeton student as a senior thesis. GPTZero provides a great example of what it means to be an “AI-native” company and the new normal for venture-backed growth. Founded in 2023, the company grew (profitably!) to 19M+ users and $30M+ in ARR in 3 years with a headcount of 30. GPTZero’s technology will be incorporated into the Superhuman Go platform while also remaining a standalone product.

Buyouts

Achieve Partners invests in Celito Tech / US, Life Sciences Consulting

Achieve Partners, a New York-based PE firm focused on mid-market companies in tech services, healthcare, and edtech (see below for our interview with Managing Director Ryan Craig), invested in Celito Tech, a Palo Alto-based life sciences consultancy that provides regulatory, compliance, and IT services to biotech and pharma firms. The investment was made through Achieve's recently closed $450M Workforce II fund, which targets high-growth sectors facing critical talent shortages. The firm plans to execute their cross-fund strategy of accelerating growth through the addition of a proprietary apprenticeship program.

Achieve Partners invests in Alchemy / US, Workforce Training Platform

Achieve also invested in Alchemy, which bills itself as the first internship service provider: an infrastructure layer between employers, colleges, and career launchers that handles recruitment, matching, supervision, and even serves as employer of record — removing the operational friction that keeps most companies from offering formal internship programs. The deal extends Achieve's workforce strategy from company-sponsored apprenticeships into internships, but stays consistent with the fund’s overall investment thesis: as AI transforms entry-level work, demand from young people for apprenticeship or paid, in-field internships will increase by an order of magnitude.

Featured Fund - Achieve Partners

Achieve Partners has been one of the busiest funds in the industry this year, announcing a new $450M buyout fund, the acquisitions of Alchemy and Celito Tech (see “Buyouts” above for more on those deals), an investment in FutureFit AI, and the $465M sale of Optimum Healthcare IT to Infosys.

This week, I sat down with Achieve’s Managing Director Ryan Craig to learn more about these deals and the firm’s mission to bring apprenticeship programs to services businesses in talent-starved sectors all over the economy. You can read about this year’s deals below and catch our full conversation on Youtube.

What’s on your Whiteboard? CEO Perspectives

Anant Agarwal joins to discuss his first new role in 15 years(!), stepping in as CEO of AI grading startup Grady.

Oklahoma University Education Services CEO Sanam Raza joins to discuss the evolution of online learning, including new, self-governed models for how universities can manage their online programs

News of Note

K-12

• It was…a tough couple of weeks for AI optimists in the EdTech world. Norway banned AI from classrooms until age 14, the New York Times ran a deep dive on AI cheating, and TIME and The Atlantic made the case for reading on paper and AI’s inability to motivate students, respectively.

• Receiving more mixed reviews, tax revenues from data center builds in Louisiana have led to a (short term) boom in teacher pay.

• Also, everyone’s favorite EdTech lightning rod Alpha School decided to offer a $4,500/week summer camp in the Hamptons.

• And, a charter school spent $500,000 on AI robots.

• Setting AI aside, there was some optimism in the news:

  • American schools are not performing as poorly as you have been led to believe.

  • While Indiana continues to scale its apprenticeship program.

  • And, summer programs boost learning for tens of thousands.

Higher Ed

• The price of college is being renegotiated in real time this summer. Caps on student loans introduced in last year’s OBBBA went into effect July 1, leading to the argument that Americans will get less help paying for college. 

• This argument is technically true, but it ignores the effect that uncapped access to loans may have had driving tuition up in the first place.

• Unfortunately, while the caps went into effect July 1, the policy is still not settled. A federal judge threw a wrench into the OBBBA’s definition of “professional” degrees, voiding the administration’s (relatively narrow) definition of which degree programs would be eligible for higher loan limits.

• Meanwhile, some institutions are forging ahead with new tuition plans. Whitman College announced that it would fix tuition at 10% of parent income, following Princeton’s move last year to waive tuition for students from families earning less than $250K/year (possibly to skirt the federal endowment tax).

• Tuition pricing is not a particularly fun topic, but monitoring it is of even more import this year given all of the other places universities are feeling revenue pressure. Still recovering from last year’s research funding apocalypse, universities continue to navigate a dramatic drop in international enrollments, the demographic cliff, and even employers starting to question the value of post-secondary degrees (at least MBAs). 

Workforce

• The AI jobs debate continues to be messy. For every study showing job displacement, there's another showing new jobs being created.

• Corporate America isn't waiting for clarity: big companies are launching programs to ease the A.I. transition for American workers, a continuation of the commitments from Meta, Google, and Anthropic we covered last time.

Looking for your next opportunity in education? Check out our W/A Jobs, which features 3,574 career opportunities from 320 organizations across the education industry. A few roles that we’re excited about from the past week:

• Duolingo is hiring a Director of Engineering, Math in New York to lead the engineering team behind its math offering as the company expands beyond language learning

• Code.org is hiring a Manager, CS & AI Curriculum to lead development of its AI Foundations course materials. The role comes just weeks after the nonprofit rebranded as CodeAI, cementing its shift from computer science to AI education.

• McGraw-Hill is hiring a remote Sr Technical Product Manager to guide platform and data infrastructure development across its digital learning products

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.