EdTech: what are the top startups now?
Everything we know about the EdTech market, in one place. Get our report whether you build or invest.
Summary
Preply, Quizlet, MagicSchool AI, Multiverse, and Speak are the top EdTech startups now. Preply stands out for its commercial progress, Quizlet for its enormous student audience, and MagicSchool for its growing presence in teachers' everyday work.
EdTech funding remains roughly 86% below its pandemic peak, falling from $19.4 billion in 2021 to approximately $2.8 billion in 2025. The recovery is selective: investors are still backing billion-dollar education businesses, but far fewer companies are attracting substantial financing.
Preply has one of the strongest financial stories among private EdTech companies. Its $150 million funding round valued it at $1.2 billion, and it reported 12 consecutive months of EBITDA profitability. Human tutoring remains a serious business even as AI language apps improve.
Quizlet's competitive advantage is distribution. With more than 60 million monthly users and an established library of study materials, it can introduce AI features to an audience that newer education startups would spend years trying to acquire. How an incumbent with a built-in audience adds AI to its existing products is a strategy question we study in our report on EdTech.
MagicSchool's progress is particularly interesting because adoption extends beyond experimentation. Research involving approximately 87,000 highly active educators shows that teachers are using AI for lesson preparation, feedback, assessment, and other recurring tasks. Whether schools will keep paying for those tools is the next test.
AI language learning is creating a different competitive battle. Speak reached a $1 billion valuation by focusing on conversational practice, but its latest disclosed learner figures are older and its revenue remains undisclosed. Duolingo's public financial results make the gap in commercial transparency obvious.
Corporate training offers substantial contract opportunities but difficult economics. Multiverse reached a $2.1 billion valuation and reported becoming cash-positive, yet its earlier financial statements showed losses equivalent to nearly 80% of annual revenue. Demand for AI skills does not automatically translate into attractive margins.
Historical unicorn valuations have become poor indicators of current business strength. Guild once reached $4.4 billion, but subsequent secondary-market indications were dramatically lower. Customer retention, growth, and operating performance deserve more weight than an old financing announcement.
School-focused EdTech is producing two different kinds of progress. LEAD Group has demonstrated improving EBITDA and narrower losses, while MagicSchool has stronger evidence of rapid adoption. Both are promising, but only one currently provides detailed financial results supporting its operating improvements.
Public companies establish a demanding benchmark. Duolingo generated $298.5 million in quarterly revenue and $33.2 million in net income, while PhysicsWallah reported strong annual revenue growth and sharply reduced losses. Private startups still have a lot to prove before they can claim comparable financial strength.
The clearest divide in EdTech is now between companies demonstrating durable customer demand and those still valued mainly on their potential. Preply, MagicSchool, and Quizlet lead our private-company assessment for different reasons: commercial validation, habitual product usage, and unmatched distribution within their respective markets.
Written by the New Market Pitch teamWe track new markets so founders and investors can move faster. About us
In our report covering the edtech market, we turn what is vague and complex into simple, useful visuals. Market maps like this one show you at a glance where every startup stands.
Is EdTech finally recovering from its post-pandemic crash?
EdTech is recovering, but investors are still spending far less money on education startups than they did during the pandemic boom.
According to Crunchbase, global funding for education-focused startups reached approximately $2.8 billion in 2025, compared with $19.4 billion in 2021. That's a decline of roughly 86%. Tracxn, using a different dataset, also reported that annual funding had fallen below $3 billion.
Yet several companies are still raising substantial amounts. Preply secured $150 million at a $1.2 billion valuation in January 2026, while Multiverse raised $70 million at a $2.1 billion valuation in May. Both focus on practical skills, with Preply connecting students to tutors and Multiverse helping companies train employees.
EdTech investment remains close to 85% below its peak, but billion-dollar valuations are still achievable. Investors have become much more selective about which education businesses deserve their money. How selective investors have become, and what they now back or avoid, is something we follow in our EdTech market report.
Which EdTech startups are leading the industry right now?
Quizlet, Preply, MagicSchool AI, Multiverse, and Speak are our strongest private EdTech contenders today, although each leads in a different part of education.
Quizlet stands out for its enormous student audience, while Preply combines international reach with reported profitability. MagicSchool has become a major name in AI tools for teachers, and Multiverse has built relationships with large employers willing to pay for workforce training.
Speak deserves attention for its AI-powered language conversations. Guild and Eruditus are also important companies, particularly in employer-funded education and professional development.
We also need to distinguish private startups from public companies. Duolingo and Coursera are publicly traded, while PhysicsWallah has also gone public. Their results still help us understand what a successful EdTech business can look like, but they should not be included in a strictly private-company ranking.
| Company | Main market | Strongest evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Quizlet | Student study tools | 60M+ monthly users |
| Preply | Live language tutoring | $1.2B valuation; reported EBITDA profitability |
| MagicSchool AI | AI tools for teachers | 3M educators reported |
| Multiverse | Workforce upskilling | $2.1B valuation |
| Speak | AI language tutoring | $1B last disclosed valuation |
| Guild | Employer-funded education | ~$275M estimated 2024 revenue |
| Eruditus | Executive education | $1B+ disclosed financing |
| LEAD Group | School technology | ₹387 crore FY2026 revenue |
| PhysicsWallah | Test preparation | ₹3,900 crore FY2026 revenue; publicly listed |
The table mixes revenue, funding, adoption, and valuation figures because private EdTech companies rarely disclose the same financial metrics. We can identify strong businesses from the available evidence, but a precise revenue ranking would require financial information that several companies have never published.
Our research about education technology gets updated several times a month, so you always get the latest view of where things stand.
Is Quizlet still one of the biggest EdTech companies?
Quizlet remains one of the biggest independent study platforms, with more than 60 million monthly users and an exceptionally strong position among American students.
In its 2026 TIME100 Most Influential Companies profile, TIME reported Quizlet's claim that approximately two-thirds of American high school students and half of college students use the platform monthly.
Those numbers help explain why Quizlet remains relevant despite the explosion of AI study assistants. Its existing audience and enormous library of user-created flashcards give it an advantage that new competitors cannot instantly reproduce.
Quizlet is also expanding beyond its original flashcard business. In February 2026, the company introduced additional AI study functionality and acquired Coconote, an AI note-taking and study-coaching company.
That acquisition fits a broader shift toward helping students turn class materials into notes, revision exercises, and personalized study sessions. Quizlet already reaches millions of those students, which could make distributing new features considerably easier.
We would put Quizlet near the top of any private EdTech ranking based on student reach. Its financial position is harder to judge because current revenue and profitability figures are not publicly available.
Is Preply becoming a serious competitor to Duolingo?
Preply is now one of the strongest private language-learning companies, but its biggest opportunity comes from people who want a real tutor rather than another self-study app.
Preply raised $150 million in January 2026 at a valuation of $1.2 billion. At the time, the company reported more than 100,000 tutors on its marketplace, with learners across 180 countries and lessons available in over 90 languages.
TechCrunch also reported that Preply had been EBITDA-positive for 12 months before the financing announcement. That's particularly encouraging in a sector where many companies have struggled to turn growth into profits.
Duolingo operates on a much larger scale. Its second-quarter 2026 results showed 58.7 million daily active users, 12.7 million paid subscribers, and $298.5 million in quarterly revenue.
But Preply addresses a different part of language education. Customers pay for scheduled conversations, individual feedback, and the accountability that comes with having a teacher.
Preply's $1.2 billion valuation suggests investors believe there's room for a substantial human-tutoring business alongside mass-market language apps. Its reported profitability makes that argument more convincing.
In our market report about education technology, we look at what the winners do differently, so you can learn from the best instead of guessing.
Can Speak become the next Duolingo?
Speak has become one of the most interesting AI language-learning startups, although its commercial scale is still nowhere near Duolingo's publicly reported numbers.
The company raised $78 million in December 2024 at a $1 billion valuation, double the $500 million valuation it had reached six months earlier. Its investors include Accel, Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, and the OpenAI Startup Fund.
Speak concentrates on spoken language practice. Instead of spending most of their time completing vocabulary exercises, learners practice conversations with an AI tutor that can respond to their speech.
The company reported more than 10 million learners across over 40 countries in June 2024. It also said its learner population had doubled annually over the preceding five years.
That historical growth is impressive, but we still lack comparable current figures for paid subscribers, revenue, and retention. Duolingo publishes those metrics every quarter, making its financial strength much easier to establish.
Speak could become a major competitor in conversational language learning. Calling it the next Duolingo, though, is getting ahead of the evidence. We need to know how many users actually keep paying. Whether learners keep paying after the first months is the kind of business model test we compare in our market report about EdTech.
Is MagicSchool AI becoming the go-to AI tool for teachers?
MagicSchool AI is one of the clearest leaders in AI software for teachers, with millions of educators using its tools for everyday classroom work.
An Anthropic customer case study reported approximately 3 million educators, more than 5,500 school and district partnerships, and over 100 million AI-powered interactions.
More interestingly, Stanford's SCALE Initiative studied actual MagicSchool activity from approximately 87,000 highly active American educators between May 2023 and November 2025.
The researchers found that the platform's general-purpose AI assistant represented around 18% of interaction threads. Teachers also frequently used specialized tools for writing feedback, rewriting educational materials, preparing lessons, and creating assessments.
Usage differed by grade level. Elementary teachers focused more on communication and student support, while secondary teachers used more instructional-material and feedback tools.
That research gives us something more useful than a signup count. MagicSchool has found recurring uses inside teachers' working routines, across different subjects and grade levels.
The remaining question is commercial: how many schools will pay for these tools over several years? MagicSchool has demonstrated substantial usage, but its revenue and contract-renewal figures are less transparent.
In our document detailing everything you need to know about edtech, you will always find fresh funding data, taken straight from our own verified funding database.
Are AI tutors starting to replace human teachers?
AI tutors are already taking over parts of language practice, revision, and lesson preparation, but the biggest EdTech companies still show strong demand for human instruction.
Speak uses AI conversations to let learners practice speaking without scheduling a teacher. MagicSchool automates tasks such as generating classroom materials and providing writing feedback. Both offer ways to reduce the time and cost of certain educational activities.
Meanwhile, Preply continues to attract substantial investment around human tutoring. Its marketplace contains more than 100,000 instructors, showing that personalized, scheduled lessons remain commercially valuable.
We can also see the distinction in what customers are buying. Someone who wants to practice pronunciation at midnight may prefer an AI conversation partner. Someone preparing for a high-stakes examination or struggling to maintain motivation may prefer regular sessions with a tutor.
AI will probably take a substantial share of repetitive learning activities, especially paid conversation practice. But replacing that practice is a very different challenge from replacing a teacher who understands a student's weaknesses, motivation, and progress over time.
Is Multiverse one of the strongest workforce-training startups?
Multiverse is currently one of the leading private workforce-training companies, although its historical losses make its financial position less impressive than its $2.1 billion valuation suggests.
In May 2026, Multiverse announced $70 million in new financing, increasing its valuation from approximately $1.7 billion in 2022. The company had trained around 30,000 apprentices and worked with organizations including Microsoft and John Lewis.
Multiverse has increasingly focused on helping employers develop AI and technical skills. Its January 2026 acquisition of Germany's StackFuel also strengthened its presence in continental Europe.
The financial figures deserve attention. The Financial Times reported revenue of £79.6 million and losses of £62.4 million for the financial year ending March 2025. Those losses represented approximately 78% of revenue.
Multiverse subsequently reported becoming cash-positive in early 2026, although that does not establish full-year accounting profitability.
It has credible corporate customers, an increasingly relevant AI-training offering, and strong investor support. But a $2.1 billion valuation is a demanding price for a business with that loss history. Revenue growth and tighter cost control will have to do the heavy lifting.
Learning from others' mistakes is the cheapest lesson there is. In our report covering the edtech market, we look at what broke startups before you, so you don't repeat it.
Can Guild build a bigger business than consumer EdTech apps?
Guild has built a substantial employer-funded education business, but its relatively slow recent growth makes it difficult to rank alongside the fastest-growing EdTech companies.
Sacra estimates that Guild generated approximately $275 million in revenue in 2024, compared with $261 million in 2023. That's growth of around 5.5%.
Guild works with employers such as Walmart, Target, and Lowe's to connect employees with education and training programs. The model gives workers access to learning opportunities financed or supported by their employers. Employers paying to keep workers learning is a customer need we map in our report covering the EdTech market.
In 2024, Guild reported that approximately 1.4 million employees engaged with its platform and that around 60,000 program completions or graduations occurred.
Those are substantial numbers, but Guild's valuation history tells a more complicated story. After reaching $4.4 billion in 2022, the company reportedly traded at implied valuations of approximately $1.46 billion to $1.98 billion in secondary-market indications during 2024.
That represents a decline of roughly 55% to 67% from its earlier valuation.
Guild has clearly built a sizeable business with major corporate relationships. Its biggest challenge now is proving it can grow considerably faster without returning to the spending levels associated with the previous EdTech boom.
Is Eruditus still a major player in online executive education?
Eruditus remains one of the largest privately financed executive-education companies, although its current competitive position is harder to measure than that of EdTech businesses publishing regular financial results.
Through its Emeritus brand, Eruditus works with universities to offer professional courses, executive education, and career-development programs.
Funding databases such as Inc42 report more than $1.2 billion in financing associated with the business, including debt. That makes Eruditus one of the better-funded companies in this part of the education market.
Its approach is quite different from consumer subscription platforms. Eruditus sells programs connected to university brands and professional qualifications, often targeting working professionals willing to spend substantial amounts on career advancement.
That puts it in competition with Coursera's professional credentials, corporate training providers, and universities offering their own online programs.
Eruditus deserves a place among the major private EdTech companies. We would rank it below businesses with stronger recent evidence of revenue growth or profitability until more comparable financial information becomes available.
In our research about education technology, we always try to gather several sources and make estimates that make sense, so you can work with solid numbers.
Which EdTech companies are actually making money?
Duolingo currently provides one of the strongest examples of profitable EdTech at scale, while PhysicsWallah, Preply, and Guild show how different the financial picture can be across the industry.
Duolingo generated $298.5 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2026, up 18% year over year. It also reported $33.2 million in net income and a gross margin of 72.6%.
PhysicsWallah's FY2026 revenue reached approximately ₹3,900 crore, up 35%, while its net loss fell from roughly ₹243 crore to ₹24 crore.
Preply has reported EBITDA profitability, though it has not disclosed enough current financial data to compare its operating margins with those of public companies.
Guild's estimated annual revenue of $275 million places it among the larger private businesses, although its reported growth was much slower. Multiverse, meanwhile, still had substantial accounting losses in its latest detailed historical financial disclosures.
Coursera offers another useful comparison. Following its combination with Udemy, the company reported $298.6 million in quarterly revenue. But its shareholder letter indicated that normalized revenue declined 1% year over year, meaning much of its reported 60% increase reflected the merger.
| Company | Financial evidence | What we can conclude |
|---|---|---|
| Duolingo | $298.5M quarterly revenue; $33.2M net income | Profitable public EdTech leader |
| PhysicsWallah | ₹3,900 crore revenue; 35% annual growth | Fast-growing, losses sharply reduced |
| Coursera + Udemy | $298.6M quarterly revenue | Large scale; normalized revenue down 1% |
| Preply | Reported EBITDA profitability | Encouraging private-company economics |
| Guild | ~$275M estimated annual revenue | Substantial business; modest growth |
| Multiverse | £79.6M annual revenue | Significant historical losses |
| LEAD Group | ₹387 crore annual revenue; positive EBITDA | Improving operating performance |
| Quizlet | 60M+ monthly users | Commercial reach clear; finances undisclosed |
| Speak | $1B last disclosed valuation | Current profitability unknown |
These companies report different periods and financial measures, so we cannot turn the figures into an exact profitability ranking. Still, Duolingo's publicly reported revenue and earnings set a demanding benchmark for the private companies trying to become the next major EdTech business.
Are EdTech unicorn valuations still believable?
EdTech unicorn valuations can still be justified, but several companies would need much stronger financial growth to support their previously announced prices.
Consider three recent private-company examples. Speak reached a $1 billion valuation in December 2024, Preply reached $1.2 billion in January 2026, and Multiverse reached $2.1 billion in May 2026.
Those valuations reflect the prices investors accepted during specific funding rounds. They don't tell us how much the companies would be worth in a public market today.
Guild provides a useful warning. Its historical $4.4 billion valuation was followed by much lower secondary-market indications, despite the company continuing to serve major employers.
The wider market has also changed. Coursera and Udemy completed their merger in May 2026, combining two established education platforms in an effort to create a larger, more competitive business.
We would therefore place much more weight on revenue growth, profitability, and customer retention than on historical unicorn status. A $1 billion valuation means relatively little without knowing how much customers spend and whether they continue paying.
If you build or invest in the edtech market, you need to know which business models pay off now and which ones are fading. That's why our report covering it has a whole section on it.
Are smaller EdTech startups finding better ways to make money?
Smaller EdTech companies such as LEAD Group and MagicSchool are showing that selling directly to schools can work, even without building an enormous consumer audience.
India's LEAD Group reported approximately ₹387 crore in FY2026 revenue, up around 10%, while EBITDA increased to approximately ₹30 crore, according to financial reporting published by the Financial Express.
Its net loss narrowed from roughly ₹43.3 crore to ₹34.5 crore. Revenue growth was relatively modest, but the improvement in operating performance suggests LEAD is managing costs more effectively.
LEAD sells curriculum and technology solutions to schools, rather than relying exclusively on individual students buying subscriptions.
MagicSchool operates in a related institutional market, offering AI tools that teachers can use for lesson planning, feedback, assessment, and classroom preparation.
School-focused companies have a clear opportunity when their products become part of everyday teaching. However, institutional purchasing can also take time, and schools have limited budgets.
For LEAD, improving profitability is already measurable. For MagicSchool, the stronger evidence currently concerns teacher adoption. That distinction matters when comparing their commercial maturity. Profit evidence in one company and adoption evidence in another are different market signals, which we track every quarter in our report on EdTech.
Are AI startups taking over EdTech from established companies?
AI startups are winning attention and creating new learning products, but established EdTech companies are still holding their ground.
Speak has attracted major investment into conversational AI, while Duolingo increased its daily active users by approximately 11 million between the second quarters of 2025 and 2026.
MagicSchool has become a prominent AI platform for teachers, but Quizlet continues to report a huge student audience and has been adding AI features to its existing study products.
Coursera is also investing directly in AI. In July 2026, the company announced a $100 million strategic investment in LearnVector, a company founded by Andrew Ng.
Across these examples, established companies are adapting rather than abandoning their markets to newer competitors.
AI-native startups can move quickly because they build around specific tasks, such as speaking practice or lesson creation. Established companies can distribute similar capabilities to customers they already have.
The advantage depends on the product. A focused AI startup may build the best experience for one activity, but a large existing user base remains valuable when customers want multiple learning tools in one place.
So, what are the top EdTech startups now?
Quizlet, Preply, MagicSchool AI, Multiverse, and Speak are our top private EdTech startups today, with Preply and MagicSchool offering two of the most convincing recent growth stories.
Quizlet leads on established student reach, with more than 60 million monthly users. Preply combines a global tutor marketplace with a recent $1.2 billion valuation and reported EBITDA profitability. MagicSchool has shown that teachers are regularly using AI for real classroom tasks, supported by research into tens of thousands of educators.
Multiverse remains one of the most important workforce-training companies, although its historical losses are difficult to ignore. Speak could become a major AI language-learning business, but we still want to see more financial evidence before ranking it alongside the strongest established operators.
Guild and Eruditus remain substantial private companies, particularly in professional education. Neither has provided enough recent evidence to clearly outperform our top five.
If we include publicly traded companies, Duolingo stands out for its combination of user growth and profitability. PhysicsWallah has also become a major EdTech operator, particularly in India's examination-preparation market.
Our strongest overall private-company picks are Preply for its commercial progress, MagicSchool for its adoption among teachers, and Quizlet for its extraordinary distribution. They have different strengths, but each has already built something competitors would struggle to reproduce quickly.
Our methodology
This analysis identifies the leading EdTech startups by comparing recent commercial performance, user adoption, funding activity, financial results, and competitive positioning. We examine private companies across language learning, student study tools, classroom software, workforce training, and professional education rather than treating EdTech as a single market with one obvious winner.
We evaluated six main dimensions: market momentum, user adoption, commercial traction, financial performance, competitive positioning, and AI integration. We assessed these dimensions together, giving more weight to demonstrated customer demand, recurring product usage, profitability, and sustainable growth than to historical valuations or fundraising announcements alone.
Our private-company selection includes Quizlet, Preply, MagicSchool AI, Multiverse, Speak, Guild, Eruditus, and LEAD Group. We also examined publicly traded companies, including Duolingo, Coursera, and PhysicsWallah, as financial benchmarks. Public companies were excluded from the final private-startup ranking, but their disclosed results help establish what commercial success looks like at greater scale.
For industry momentum, we used Crunchbase's EdTech funding analysis and compared recent global investment with the 2021 peak. Different research providers apply different industry definitions, so funding estimates are treated as approximate market indicators rather than directly interchangeable datasets.
Company valuations are based on disclosed financing rounds where available. We distinguish those transaction-based valuations from secondary-market indications, historical valuations, and total capital raised. A funding-round valuation represents what investors paid at a particular moment; it does not independently establish a company's current economic value or financial health.
For commercial performance, we prioritized reported revenue, profitability, customer engagement, and identifiable institutional relationships. We distinguished EBITDA profitability from net income, cash-positive operations from accounting profitability, and annual revenue from quarterly revenue. Where companies had not published financial results, we used adoption and product-usage evidence without treating it as proof of profitability.
We also considered how AI is changing the industry. Speak and MagicSchool illustrate AI-native approaches to language practice and classroom workflows, while Quizlet and Duolingo show how established platforms can introduce AI features to existing audiences. Stanford's research into MagicSchool usage was particularly useful for examining recurring activity rather than relying exclusively on company-reported signup totals.
Our final assessment is editorial rather than based on a rigid numerical score. We compared the recency, reliability, and consistency of each company's evidence, giving greater weight to established achievements than future projections. The resulting ranking reflects different forms of leadership: Quizlet's student reach, Preply's commercial progress, MagicSchool's teacher adoption, Multiverse's employer relationships, and Speak's positioning in AI language learning.
Key sources for industry investment and company adoption include Crunchbase News on EdTech funding, TIME's Quizlet company profile, Quizlet's AI product announcement, Preply's Series D announcement, Speak's Series C announcement, and Speak's earlier financing and learner-growth disclosure.
For AI adoption and professional education, we used Anthropic's MagicSchool customer case study, the Stanford SCALE Initiative's first and second research reports on teacher usage, Multiverse's financing announcement, its StackFuel acquisition announcement, and Emeritus's Eruditus Series F disclosure.
For financial benchmarking, we examined Duolingo's second-quarter 2026 shareholder letter, Coursera's second-quarter 2026 shareholder letter, Coursera's announcement of its Udemy combination, Coursera's financial results and LearnVector investment announcement, PhysicsWallah's financial disclosures, and Financial Express reporting on LEAD Group's financial performance.
Theory only gets you so far. In our document detailing everything you need to know about edtech, we dig up the real signals from the field and show you the ones worth watching.
Written by the New Market Pitch teamWe track new markets so founders and investors can move faster. About us