Owl Ventures, the largest venture capital fund in education technology, announced today that it closed $585 million across two new funds. The Silicon Valley and San Francisco based firm closed $415 million for its fourth fund and $170 million for its first Opportunity Fund. The new funds will help fuel its strategy of making early, growth and later stage investments in the world’s leading education technology companies across the education spectrum including PreK-12, higher education and future of work (career mobility/professional learning).
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Since its founding in 2014, the firm has been a major investor in many of the fastest growing companies in the global EdTech market including U.S. companies Accelerate Learning (acquired by Carlyle Group), Degreed, DreamBox Learning (acquired by TPG Rise), Hazel Health, MasterClass, Newsela, Noodle Partners, Quizlet, Remind and international companies such as BYJU’s, Labster, Lele Ketang, Sanjieke and WhiteHat Jr. (acquired by BYJU’s).
“Since we began the firm, we have seen the digital revolution rapidly unfold in education and workforce development,” said Tory Patterson, Managing Director at Owl Ventures. “Due to the shift to remote learning and work, we find ourselves in a watershed moment for the over $6 trillion education and training market as the rising digital penetration in the sector that had already been taking place has surged.”
“We are finding that our portfolio companies based in the U.S., China, Europe and India are mission-critical elements to continued learning,” said Ian Chiu, Managing Director at Owl Ventures. “Inbound inquiries, user growth/engagement, and customer pipelines have dramatically spiked across our portfolio with our platforms being leveraged globally.”
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The success of Owl Ventures global investment strategy was recently highlighted by two of its portfolio companies in India when BYJU’s, the most valuable privately held EdTech company in the world, acquired 18 month old start-up WhiteHat Jr for $300 million. Owl Ventures was the only fund that was an investor in both companies.
“The meteoric growth of both Whitehat Jr and BYJU’s is illustrative of the rapidly growing and maturing EdTech market in India and throughout the world,” said Amit Patel, Managing Director at Owl Ventures. “We seek to partner with visionary entrepreneurs who are tackling large problems in education as well as training and help them build transformative category leading companies.”
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