GSV Ventures is a global venture capital fund focused on the rapidly growing digital education market from Pre-K to Gray. We back early and late stage entrepreneurs transforming the $7 trillion digital education and future of work sectors. Investments include Coursera, ClassDojo, Degreed, and Guild Education. GSV is also the convener of the world renowned ASU+GSV Summit. The 11th annual summit gathered 35,000 founders, investors, educators, and policy makers from 135 countries.

GSV Ventures

Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) are essentially networks of schools. These schools are managed by a leadership team that provides shared academic, human capital, back-office, operational and financial services. Often launched from the base of a single successful charter school, CMOs combine the autonomy of local, school-based decisions with the ability to provide leveraged support and effective management across many schools. They seek to create a flexible, scalable and replicable model for delivering results to their students.

Charter School Growth Fund

ECMC is a non-profit corporation that supports the administration of the Federal Family Education Loan Program as a student loan guaranty agency. It sponsors programs to help students and families plan and pay for college. ECMC works with schools and loan servicers to lower student loan default rates, promote financial literacy, and provide resources to support student loan borrowers to repay their loans. It provides postsecondary institutions with a suite of services that includes financial literacy, student loan repayment counseling, and default prevention. ECMC is headquartered in Oakdale, Pennsylvania.

ECMC

Owl Ventures is a venture capital fund that invests in education technology companies. The firm has invested in 24 companies across the education spectrum encompassing early childhood, K-12, higher education, and career mobility/professional learning. Owl leverages its deep domain expertise and takes an active hands-on approach to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses into transformative category-leading companies. The firm was founded in 2014 and has over $600 million in assets under management.

Owl Ventures

Common Sense (www.commonsensemedia.org/) is the nation's leading independent nonprofit organization devoted to helping kids and families thrive in a world of media and technology. Recently, Common Sense launched Common Sense Growth, a for-profit subsidiary, to launch mission-aligned products and services and execute licensing deals that support the broad mission of Common Sense.

Common Sense Growth

Cambiar Education is a nonprofit venture design studio focused on student success and equity.

Cambiar Education

Imagine Learning Foundation fosters well-being of learners and the people who support them at home and in their communities.

Imagine Learning Foundation

Array Education is a non-profit organization offering teaching and learning projects, and financial and education administration solutions.

Array Education

Kyron Learning

Kyron Learning is an EdTech company that provides equitable access to one-on-one education.

Kyron Learning is an AI-based EdTech company that provides an interactive video platform for personalized learning experiences. The company aims to use AI to improve the accessibility and effectiveness of education. Kyron's platform allows students to engage with video lessons by responding to questions via text or voice. The company's proprietary conversational AI technology understands student responses and selects relevant, pre-recorded teacher responses, achieving approximately 95% accuracy in natural language processing.

Remote learning is driving an education technology revolution.

EdTech: K-12

KYRON LEARNING SELECTED BY WESTERN GOVERNORS UNIVERSITY, ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ...

Kyron Learning is an AI-based EdTech company that provides an interactive video platform for personalized learning experiences. The company aims to use AI to improve the accessibility and effectiveness of education. Kyron's platform allows students to engage with video lessons by responding to questions via text or voice. The company's proprietary conversational AI technology understands student responses and selects relevant, pre-recorded teacher responses, achieving approximately 95% accuracy in natural language processing.The platform primarily uses AI techniques such as natural language understanding (NLU)-based dialog modeling and GenAI. Kyron is also working to integrate GenAI to provide AI-powered responses when students need additional assistance. For the 2023–2024 school year, Kyron Learning provided fourth-grade math lessons to 35 pilot schools, with plans to expand to third- and fifth-grade math content. The company also provides lessons for Spanish-speaking students.In March 2024, Kyron Learning announced the beta launch of Kyron Studio, an all-in-one platform that allows teachers and instructors to create AI-powered interactive, multimodal lessons on any subject in minutes. This tool allows educators to specify the pedagogical approach and guardrails for AI-delivered lessons, with the option to augment the generated content with video, visuals, or other materials.

Founded in 2016, BookNook is an online literacy platform designed for learners in grades 1-5. Partnering with school districts and non-profit organizations, the company focuses on human-to-human learning and works with children one-on-one or in small groups, enabling it to gather rich, observational data. As of June 2021, the company partnered with hundreds of schools, school districts, and non-profits across 35 states.BookNook differs from other digital literacy tools by not requiring students to take formative assessments to check for their understanding. Rather, the platform lets teachers record qualitative data on oral fluency, such as whether a student pauses at punctuation marks as they read aloud, or reads in set phrases. Students can also record self-reflections on the platform.In June 2021, the company partnered with MIND Research Institute, a neuroscience and education social impact organization and creator of the PreK-8 visual instructional program ST Math, to deliver a High Dosage Tutoring program (HDT) for math to K-8 students to address unfinished learning. BookNook tutors will deliver tutoring sessions using the ST Math program over BookNook’s synchronous learning platform. The company launched a new teacher application portal at booknooktutor.com in October 2021, giving experienced teachers the opportunity to apply to become BookNook virtual tutors on its platform. BookNook intends to engage 10,000 virtual teachers to support 80,000 students by the end of the 2021-2022 school year.

BookNook

Story2 uses its proprietary Moments Method writing system, its StoryBuilder software, and live online group coaching to help high school students and professionals improve their writing, speaking, storytelling, and collaboration skills.The company aims to help different segments with their specific needs: students with college admission and scholarship essays, professionals preparing for interviews and creating cover letters, and business teams to improve sales, recruiting and company messaging through effective storytelling.Since 2013, Story2 has worked with more than 200,000 individuals in 21 countries with college admission essays, interview preparation, and pitching ideas. The company is expanding into China and India in 2020 and plans to focus on helping science and technology students improve their communication and leadership skills.

Story2

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 Vooks offers a subscription-based, ad-free curated library of children's books converted to video with narration and some slow-paced animation, allowing children to read along while watching. Aimed at young children aged 6 months to 8 years, Vooks promotes reading aloud to develop fluency and comprehension. The company was founded by siblings Marshall Bex and Shannon Bex, and Russell Hirtzel, and is reportedly the first-ever streaming service for books with illustrations, read-along text and animations.
 
 
 In February 2020, Vooks raised USD 12 million in Series A funding; however, the investors and purpose of the funding were not disclosed. In November 2020, the company raised USD 21.9 million in equity investments from more than 30 investors.
 
 
 In November 2020, Vooks partnered with United Way of Metropolitan Dallas (UWMD), a community-based, nonprofit social change organization, and Atmos Energy, a natural gas distributor, to provide around 78,000 one-year Vooks subscriptions for children aged 3 to 6 and early education teachers in the Greater Dallas area. The program is funded by a USD 1 million contribution from Atmos Energy, and contributes to UWMD’s Aspire United 2030 education goal of increasing the number of North Texas students reading at grade level by third grade by 50%. Similarly, in March 2021, the company partnered with Reach Out and Read Of Greater New York (ROR GNY), a nonprofit organization of healthcare providers who promote early literacy. The partnership aims to provide more than 75,000 preschool children with one-year Vooks subscriptions starting in March 2021.
 
 
 In July 2021, it was reported that Vooks is offering its service to authors and producers as a way of quickly testing ideas with audiences through simple animated shorts. Thereby, Vooks expands its library of original content while authors and producers get real-time performance data.
 
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Vooks

Xeropan offers an AI-powered, game-based approach to learning English through 14 of the most widely-spoken languages. As of October 2020, the app had more than one million players.

Xeropan

<div>
 
 GoGuardian is a provider of student security software solutions to help educators identify learning patterns, protect students from harmful and distracting content, and support students at risk of self-harm and suicide. As of August 2021, the company had partnered with more than 10,000 schools in the US, covering more than 22 million students.  
 
 
 In November 2020, GoGuardian announced a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/1863">
 merger with Pear Deck
 </a>
 to deepen the support provided to students and teachers and improve their in-class experience. Founded in 2014, Pear Deck is a student engagement platform that allows teachers to create, edit, and launch multimedia content and formative assessments on students' devices to increase student engagement. At the time of the merger, Pear Deck was used by 8 million educators and students in more than 17,000 schools worldwide. Pear Deck co-founder and Chief Educator, Michal Eynon-Lynch, will join the GoGuardian Board of Directors. In May 2022, the company acquired 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10683">
 TutorMe,
 </a>
 Zovio’s tutoring services business, for USD 55 million in cash to strengthen its product offering. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In August 2021, GoGuardian secured a USD 200 million investment from Tiger Global Management. The funds will be allocated for product innovation, talent acquisition, and business development. 
 
 
 
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GoGuardian

Businesses providing education delivery solutions such as learning management systems (LMS), and tech solutions for data analytics, administration, and other services to educational institutions.

Businesses delivering curriculum-based learning, particularly relating to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education to educational institutions and individual students.

Mostly for-profit corporations running state-funded, tuition-free schools as an alternative to traditional public schools.

Businesses providing extra-curricular education relating to the arts, hobbies, and life skills, and entities providing college and career guidance.

Businesses delivering English language arts (ELA) education, and language learning and literacy support to educational institutions and individual students.

Platforms providing students with after-school tutoring support on an individual or group basis.

Businesses delivering early childhood education, special education, and social-emotional learning (SEL) programs to educational institutions and individual students.

Entities providing professional development resources and tools for teachers, and those providing testing and assessment solutions to educational institutions and educators.

Platforms providing student-parent-teacher-school communication and networking solutions, and those providing search, reference, and marketplace solutions.

Companies that use GenAI as a core part of their product offering for EdTech: K12 solutions

Uses GenAI to provide interactive AI tutors, create personallized learning pathways,  and gamified learning solutions

Uses AI/ML to create personalized learning plans, adaptive learning platforms, and intelligent tutoring systems

Adaptive learning platforms, personalized learning plans, and AI-powered analytics provide insight into student performance

Learning platforms that promote an inclusive and equitable educational culture for underserved communities

<div>
 Kyron Learning, an AI-based interactive video platform, has garnered USD 14.6 million in a Series A funding round alongside a USD 850,000 grant from the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation. The funds will be channelled towards enhancing the platform’s GenAI capabilities and broadening its K-12 math curriculum.
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Kyron Learning

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