What are the funding trends in EdTech right now?

All funding deals in the EdTech market over the last years

Below is the table listing all the deals. You can find our methodology at the end of this page.

If you want a deeper understanding of the market and its current dynamics, get our report covering the EdTech Market.

Is EdTech funding actually stronger right now?

EdTech funding looks stronger on the headline today, but the typical 2026 financing is smaller and the underlying capital market is clearly weaker than last year.

From January 1 through September 21, we tracked 65 EdTech financings worth $552.6 million, compared with 52 deals and $524.2 million over the same dates in 2025. Deal activity increased 25%, while capital rose only 5.4%.

The gap becomes much easier to understand once we look at round sizes. The median financing dropped from $4.66 million to $3 million, and the average fell from $10.08 million to $8.77 million. That happened even though this year's numbers contain a $150 million Preply round and a $100 million LearnVector investment.

Taking large deals out changes the picture completely. Capital excluding rounds above $50 million is down 42.3% from the same period last year. Even removing only rounds above $100 million turns the headline increase into a 23.2% decline.

Full-year comparisons tell us less because 2026 is still incomplete. For context, funding so far equals about 74% of the entire 2025 total. We would not annualize that mechanically; EdTech financing is too lumpy for that, as this year's two nine-figure rounds already demonstrate.

One freshness caveat is worth keeping in mind. Our research period runs through September 21, while the latest financing currently captured in the dataset was announced on September 10. Late disclosures could still fill part of that gap.

Market measure	2026 YTD	2025 YTD	2024 YTD
Deals	65	52	68
Unique funded companies	65	52	67
Total capital	$552.6M	$524.2M	$497.5M
Capital excluding >$50M rounds	$302.6M	$524.2M	$322.5M
Capital excluding >$100M rounds	$402.6M	$524.2M	$322.5M
Median round	$3.00M	$4.66M	$2.00M
Average round	$8.77M	$10.08M	$7.43M
Largest round	$150M	$46M	$175M
First-financing share	41.5%	26.9%	41.2%
Top-three share of capital	50.7%	24.6%	45.0%

Are more EdTech startups actually getting funded today?

More EdTech companies are getting funded today, and that broadening is real rather than the result of a few startups raising repeatedly.

We found 65 funded companies across 65 transactions. The comparable 2025 period had 52 companies, so the extra activity comes from 13 additional businesses entering the funding count.

That puts deal volume almost back at its 2024 level, when we recorded 68 financings. In other words, 2025 now looks more like the weak year for activity than the start of a continuing collapse.

The newer deals also span very different parts of EdTech. Recent financings include 3C Coding School in online technology education, Wippi's screen-free AI learning product for children, AILA's personalized assessment platform and Wild Zebra's Socratic AI tutor.

Most of these companies are raising a few million dollars rather than tens of millions. Funding activity can feel busy these days without producing a large increase in total capital.

Are Preply and LearnVector doing most of the work behind EdTech funding growth?

Preply and LearnVector are doing almost half the work behind the 2026 EdTech funding total, so the headline growth depends heavily on two very unusual transactions.

Preply raised $150 million in its Series D, while Coursera invested $100 million in LearnVector. Together, the two deals account for $250 million, or 45.2% of all the capital we tracked this year.

Preply was already operating at a very different scale from the normal startup in our dataset. The company said when announcing the round that its marketplace connected more than 100,000 tutors with learners across 180 countries and had become EBITDA-positive. The funding is going partly into AI and data, product development and international expansion.

LearnVector is unusual for the opposite reason. Andrew Ng founded the company this year, yet Coursera immediately committed $100 million. Coursera says that investment currently represents roughly one-third of LearnVector on a fully diluted basis, with the first product experiences planned for 2027.

Those transactions belong in the market total, but neither gives founders a sensible benchmark for a normal EdTech raise. Once we move below them, the funding environment looks much more modest. Telling one-off giant rounds from the normal funding picture is a market signal we track every quarter in our report on EdTech.

Are normal EdTech funding rounds getting smaller now?

A normal EdTech funding round is smaller these days, and the middle of the market has thinned out particularly sharply.

Sixty percent of 2026 financings are below $5 million, up from 51.9% last year. Rounds between $5 million and $20 million remain common, accounting for 29.2% of activity.

The striking change comes above that level. Only 4.6% of this year's deals fall between $20 million and $50 million, compared with 19.2% in 2025. We found no financings at all between $50 million and $100 million.

Then we suddenly jump to two deals above $100 million.

EdTech funding has a very odd shape right now: lots of small rounds, a reasonable layer of $5 million-to-$20 million raises, very little in the next bracket and two giant transactions sitting far above everybody else.

For founders, that probably matters more than the aggregate funding total. Capital is still available, but moving from an ordinary venture round into a genuinely large one appears much harder unless the company has exceptional scale, strategic value or both.

Can new EdTech startups still get funded today?

New EdTech startups are getting funded much more often today than they were last year, although most are starting with relatively small checks.

We classified 27 deals as first financings this year, versus 14 over the comparable 2025 period. Their share of all activity jumped from 26.9% to 41.5%, almost exactly back to where it stood in 2024.

That rebound includes businesses such as Blify, which raised $2.1 million for AI-driven workplace learning, AICertified with roughly $1.17 million, Wippi with $1.2 million and Zayra with approximately $2.8 million.

The median first financing is only $1.3 million, down from $2.21 million last year. Investors are opening more new positions, but they are often doing it cautiously.

As seen above, that helps explain why deal activity looks healthier than capital deployment. A bigger cohort of companies is getting through the funding door, while many of them are entering with fairly modest rounds.

Our first-financing classification relies on publicly identifiable funding histories rather than a perfect private record of every company's past capital, so this split should be read directionally. The year-over-year jump is still large enough to be meaningful.

Are existing EdTech startups getting smaller follow-on rounds too?

Follow-on EdTech funding is still happening at roughly the same frequency, but the checks have shrunk.

We counted 37 follow-on deals this year and 37 during the same period last year. Capital behind those transactions fell from $452.7 million to $390.3 million, while the median follow-on dropped from $7.97 million to $5 million.

Individual companies can still move up. Nectir followed a $4 million 2024 financing with a $12.5 million Series A. Ed.ai moved from roughly €1.7 million of pre-seed funding to a €5 million equity seed. Wild Zebra followed a $2 million 2025 financing with a $6 million round this year.

Those examples show investors are willing to increase their commitment when adoption develops. Across the market, though, the typical follow-on is smaller.

The pressure on round size is broader than the influx of new startups. Companies that have already raised are seeing it too.

Is early-stage EdTech funding drying up?

Early-stage EdTech funding is still very active today, and the data does not support a broad retreat from Seed investing.

Seed accounts for 50.8% of 2026 deals, almost unchanged from 50% last year. The confusing part is that the broader early-stage share appears to have fallen from 75% to 61.5%.

Much of that apparent decline comes from worse stage visibility. Deals classified as Unknown increased from 11.5% of activity to 23.1%. That shift is almost as large as the reported drop in early-stage share.

The first-financing rebound points in the same direction. If investors had broadly stopped backing young EdTech companies, we would struggle to reconcile that with the near doubling of newly financed businesses.

Where conditions have clearly become tougher is further along the venture ladder, especially around Series A and Series B. A squeeze on Series A and Series B is the kind of risk we rate in our market report about EdTech.

What happened to Series A and Series B EdTech funding?

Series A and Series B are currently the soft spot in EdTech funding, with LearnVector hiding much of the weakness at Series A.

Series A deal count fell from 13 to seven. Yet Series A capital looks almost unchanged at about $177 million because LearnVector alone contributed $100 million. Without that transaction, roughly $77 million remains.

Series B looks weaker without needing any adjustment. We found three deals worth $24.9 million, compared with six financings and $193.1 million last year.

Late-stage capital appears much larger because two Series D+ transactions account for 30.4% of all funding. Preply's round represents most of that amount.

The current stage mix is messy rather than a clean move toward either younger or older companies. Seed activity holds up, Series A deal flow has contracted, Series B has dropped sharply and a couple of large later-stage transactions dominate the top.

Stage	2026 deals	Deal share	Capital share	Median round
Seed	33	50.8%	18.2%	$2.45M
Series A	7	10.8%	32.0%	$12.50M
Series B	3	4.6%	4.5%	$5.75M
Series C	0	0%	0%	-
Series D+	2	3.1%	30.4%	$83.89M
Growth Equity	5	7.7%	10.5%	$5.95M
Unknown	15	23.1%	4.4%	$1.24M

Is Digital Tutoring really the hottest part of EdTech right now?

Digital Tutoring is attracting a lot of EdTech money right now, but Preply makes the category look much hotter than the rest of the deals justify.

We tracked 15 Digital Tutoring financings worth $203.5 million. That gives the category 36.8% of all EdTech capital even though it represents 23.1% of deals.

Most of the gap is Preply. Without its $150 million round, the category falls to around $53.5 million.

There is still plenty happening underneath. Vimi raised $12 million for an adaptive AI math tutor. Wild Zebra raised $6 million around a Socratic tutoring model. Turing added $5 million as it expands AI study agents, and Third Space Learning secured £4.4 million to push its spoken AI tutor Skye further into UK and US schools.

Those are four different businesses, geographies and product approaches, which gives the trend more substance than a single giant round.

The category's current strength is real at the deal level, while the amount of money attached to that strength is heavily inflated by Preply.

Is Workforce Learning really booming in EdTech?

Workforce Learning is one of the busiest areas in EdTech today, although LearnVector turns a solid funding year into something that looks spectacular on paper.

We counted 14 Workforce Learning deals worth $197.1 million. The category takes 21.5% of transactions but 35.7% of capital.

LearnVector contributes more than half of that funding by itself. Below it, we still find Arist at $14.1 million, xUnlocked at roughly $5.05 million, Blify at $2.1 million and Zayra at around $2.8 million.

The products are also moving beyond conventional corporate course libraries. Blify brings training into Slack, Teams and WhatsApp. LearnVector is building adaptive one-to-one learning agents. Arist works inside workplace communication channels, while Zayra is focused on fast-changing digital-finance and AI skills.

Investors are still paying attention even when the normal round sizes remain moderate. Workplace learning increasingly sits next to workflow software, AI assistants and continuous reskilling rather than functioning as a separate training portal employees visit a few times a year.

Why are School Learning Platforms raising so much less money?

School Learning Platforms are still getting plenty of deals today, but investors are paying much less per deal than they did last year.

The category produced 18 financings, the highest count of any EdTech segment we track. Its share of overall deal activity barely changed. School learning platforms and course or tutoring products are different things, and what counts in each is defined in our report covering the EdTech market.

Its share of capital collapsed from 48.5% last year to 19.7% now, while the median round dropped from $15 million to $3.3 million.

Nectir is one of the more substantial exceptions. The company raised $12.5 million and now says more than 130 schools and institutions use its AI infrastructure. That is up from the 100-plus campuses cited around the financing announcement, giving us a useful recent sign that adoption has continued after the round.

A much sharper adoption example comes from Ed.ai. Bpifrance's latest financing announcement says the platform is now deployed in 500 French schools, up from 120, and has moved from around 100 corrected papers per week to 2,500 per day. The company also reports an above-85% repurchase rate among teachers who test the product.

School-focused EdTech therefore still attracts companies and customers. What has changed is the amount investors are willing to commit to the average financing.

Are Online Course Platforms falling out of favor?

Online Course Platforms are currently the weakest major EdTech category in our numbers because deals, capital and round size have all moved in the wrong direction together.

The category's deal share fell to 13.8%, while its capital share dropped to just 3.4%. The median round is now $1.5 million, compared with $9.13 million last year.

The individual deals fit that picture. Tutorac raised $500,000, Artwod about €1.1 million, Active Learning Sciences $1.5 million and 3C Coding School $3 million.

Some of those companies are showing real traction despite the smaller rounds. Airbridge said Artwod had grown to more than 100,000 artists, with daily traffic up more than 500% over the previous 18 months. Investors have not lost interest in online learning products altogether; they are simply funding them at a different scale.

Assessment Technology looks more resilient by comparison. Its share of deals is around the same as last year and far above its 2024 level, even though the category still attracts relatively little capital.

EdTech category	2026 deals	Deal share	Capital	Median round
Digital Tutoring Tools	15	23.1%	$203.5M	$3.10M
Workforce Learning Software	14	21.5%	$197.1M	$4.75M
School Learning Platforms	18	27.7%	$109.0M	$3.30M
Online Course Platforms	9	13.8%	$18.7M	$1.50M
Assessment Technology	7	10.8%	$17.3M	$1.30M
Credentialing Platforms	2	3.1%	$7.0M	$3.51M
Total EdTech market	65	100%	$552.6M	$3.00M

Is AI actually pulling EdTech funding toward new products?

AI is clearly pulling EdTech money toward tutoring, assessment and personalized learning today, and the more convincing evidence now comes from adoption outside the financing announcements.

Nectir currently says more than 130 institutions use its education-focused AI infrastructure. Ed.ai's latest figures show deployment across 500 French schools and availability across all 50 US states. Turing's GPAI study agent has passed 1.5 million sign-ups and, according to Seoul Economic Daily, is being used at 415 US universities.

Third Space Learning gives us another angle. After raising £4.4 million to expand its spoken AI tutor Skye, the company entered a Gates Foundation-funded research program with Stanford and Cornell. The 2026-27 rollout is offering AI math tutoring to 3,000 US students as part of a controlled effort to test learning outcomes at scale.

Then there are the larger strategic bets. Coursera describes LearnVector as central to its AI strategy, while Preply is putting part of its new capital into AI and data around a marketplace that already operates at global scale.

These companies do very different things, but the common thread is easy to see: investors are backing AI when it changes how learning is delivered, personalized, assessed or embedded into daily work.

We should still be careful with the causal claim. The funding data shows where money went; it cannot tell us that AI alone caused those rounds. What we can say with much more confidence now is that the AI theme extends well beyond two headline transactions.

Is EdTech funding moving from Europe to North America?

EdTech capital is heavily tilted toward North America right now, even though Europe funds far more companies.

Europe accounts for 29 deals, or 44.6% of activity, but only $99 million of capital. North America has 18 deals and $367.6 million.

Preply and LearnVector explain about 68% of the North American total. Without those two transactions, the geographic gap would look dramatically smaller.

Europe has actually gained breadth compared with 2025, adding eight deals while receiving less money. Latin America has also reappeared with four financings, although together they represent only around 1% of capital.

We are seeing a difference in check size more than a wholesale geographic migration of EdTech startups. Europe currently produces the most funded companies; North America captures the giant rounds.

Region	2026 deals	Deal share	Capital	Capital share
Europe	29	44.6%	$99.0M	17.9%
North America	18	27.7%	$367.6M	66.5%
Asia-Pacific	9	13.8%	$57.7M	10.4%
Latin America	4	6.2%	$5.8M	1.0%
Middle East	4	6.2%	$19.5M	3.5%
Africa	1	1.5%	$3.0M	0.5%
Total	65	100%	$552.6M	100%

Are the same investors dominating EdTech funding today?

EdTech dealmaking currently comes from a surprisingly wide investor base, while strategic corporate investors are showing up less often than last year.

We found disclosed leads on 42 financings and 46 unique lead or co-lead investors. None appears more than once as a disclosed lead this year.

That is very different from the concentration of capital at company level. A few startups are absorbing enormous amounts of money, yet the investors leading the wider flow of deals remain scattered. With a few startups absorbing most capital, who backs what, and what investors now avoid, is something we follow in our EdTech market report.

Corporate participation has also dropped. We identified four strategic-investor deals, compared with eight over the same period last year.

Coursera's LearnVector transaction is the obvious exception in scale. The $100 million investment buys roughly one-third of the company and is directly connected to Coursera's AI roadmap. The other strategic deals are smaller and more operationally connected to education: Strada participated in Nectir, Jo Academy backed AILA and La Poste Ventures invested in Ed.ai.

AILA is a good recent example of that logic. Rua Growth Fund led its $3 million round, while Jo Academy joined strategically, bringing an existing digital-education business into the cap table.

Strategic money is rarer these days, although the strategic deals that do happen can carry more significance than their deal count suggests.

So is EdTech funding healthier today?

EdTech funding is healthier for startup formation today, while raising a big conventional venture round has become harder.

More companies are finding investors, first financings have rebounded, Seed remains busy and no small group of venture firms is responsible for the increase in deal activity. That gives the market a broader base than it had last year.

The weaker side sits in financing depth. Ordinary rounds have shrunk, the $20 million-to-$50 million range has become thin, Series B has cooled dramatically and follow-on investors are writing smaller typical checks.

The companies currently escaping that pressure tend to have something unusually strong behind the round. Preply has scale and profitability. LearnVector has Andrew Ng and a deeply strategic investor. Nectir, Ed.ai and Third Space Learning can point to concrete institutional adoption. The common denominator is becoming clearer: large commitments increasingly need a stronger story than simply operating in a fashionable EdTech category.

For founders, today's market offers more ways to get funded than 2025 did. It offers fewer easy routes to a large round.

What is actually changing in EdTech funding?

The biggest change in EdTech funding is the return of deal activity. More companies are getting financed, and the rebound in first financings suggests a new cohort is forming rather than capital simply circulating among the same established startups.

At the same time, investors are committing less money to the normal deal. Smaller rounds dominate the market, follow-on tickets have come down and the middle of the funding distribution has become unusually thin. We are seeing more bets, often made with less capital behind each one.

The headline funding total hides that shift because a tiny number of deals carry so much weight. As pointed out above, Preply and LearnVector alone account for almost half of this year's capital. The current year would look much weaker without them.

Investor attention is also moving inside EdTech. AI tutoring, personalized learning, assessment and workplace reskilling are drawing interest, while traditional Online Course Platforms are raising much smaller amounts. School Learning Platforms still produce plenty of deals, but their financing sizes have been repriced sharply downward.

The stage data deserves more caution. Seed remains active, while the rise in Unknown-stage classifications makes broad early-versus-late comparisons less reliable. Series A deal count and Series B funding give us a much cleaner indication of where conditions have become harder.

Taken together, 2026 EdTech looks broader, cheaper to enter and harder to scale through venture funding. Investors currently seem comfortable making many smaller bets and a handful of enormous ones, while the companies in between have to work much harder to justify a substantial check.