Roblox

Founded in 2004 by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel, Roblox is an online gaming and digital experience platform created to allow users to design their own digital experiences using a 3D desktop design tool, Roblox Studio, and share them online to be played by people around the world. Originally backed by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Investment Group of Santa Barbara, and Warner Music Group, Roblox was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker ‘RBLX’ in March 2021. With 150 million total users and 33 million active users as of 2020, the company operates a freemium model allowing users to access its vast array of content for free while offering premium options through the sale of its in-game currency “Robux.” 

Roblox for Education allows educators to create and share their lesson plans with students around the world using the Roblox platform. The platform includes classroom resources mainly consisting of lesson plans on introductions to coding, STEM learning, history, and game development among hundreds of others. In addition to user-created content, the company also publishes stand-alone modules that can be used to practice individual concepts. 

In November 2021, Roblox announced a USD 10 million Roblox Community Fund (RCF) to further expand its educational offering. The aim of the fund is to invest in education companies that integrate Roblox Studio into STEM-focused curricula and educational games. The first companies to receive the funding were FIRST, a non-profit robotics community, and Filament Games, an educational game developer. 

In December 2020, Roblox Corp acquired the intellectual property assets of Imbellus, a developer of simulation-based assessments of cognitive skills, to sharpen its recruitment practices before a late 2020 planned IPO. Imbellus is used by employers for recruitment and human capital development. Roblox will create a new team within the company led by Imbellus founder, Rebecca Kantar, to build a fair and objective assessment system for recruitment to source talent from more diverse backgrounds. 

Key customers and partnerships

In May 2022, the company partnered with Digital therapeutics (DTx) company Akili Interactive Labs, to host Akili’s DTx solution for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on its gaming platform.