A most disruptive year to schools and society proved lucrative for the education industry, particularly for those raising private capital.
In 2020, U.S. education technology startups raised over $2.2 billion in venture and private equity capital across 130 deals, according to the EdSurge edtech funding database. That’s a nearly 30 percent increase from the $1.7 billion invested in 2019, which was spread across 105 deals.
The $2.2 billion marks the highest investment total in a single year for the U.S. edtech industry.
Many education entrepreneurs have long mused about how new technologies would usher in a “disruption” of the education market. But nothing proved to be as literally disruptive as a pandemic that closed schools, upended livelihoods and forced millions of students and educators to rely on new digital tools, many for the first time. From Zoom schooling to workforce reskilling, existing and new education funders jumped on opportunities to support products that not only serve as stopgaps, but also reimagine education for the long haul.
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