KA’CHING: US edtech raised $116M in September 2015, according to analysis by EdSurge. The funding was spread across 16 different deals; at least 56 unique investors participated.
Civitas Learning leads the way in September funding with its $60M in Series D led by private equity firm Warburg Pincus with participation from previous investors Austin Ventures, Emergence Capital Partners, Felicis Ventures, Gera Venture Capital, Rethink Education and SFJ Ventures. Civitas, based in Austin, Texas, builds tools that analyze different buckets of data collected at colleges and universities to help administrators, faculty and students make better-informed decisions to boost course completion and, by extension, on-time graduation rates. Today, the company is working with 800 campuses across 80 institutions in North America, reaching an estimated 2.7 million students. With the new round of funding, Civitas plans to expand its product offerings and potentially to explore strategic acquisitions.
Other big winners included $13M in funding to Learn Zillion, which offers educator-created digital curriculum and professional learning platform to help schools transition to Common Core standards. LearnZillion will use the funding to build out a full K-8 math curriculum based on the work of 140 math teachers from 38 states. LearnZillion says that its software is being used by one in four K-12 teachers across the US, representing 15,000 schools and 2,000 districts. San Francisco-based Credible brought in $10M in funding to scale its platform which allows students to compare student loan offers from different providers and finance or refinance those loans. The company claims to have helped nearly 73,000 people with their loans. Rounding out the month’s top deals was exploration-based learning company, Planet3, which scored $10M in Series A funding to launch its interactive 3D experiences and game-based tools aligned to Next Generation Science Standards.
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Editor’s note: This analysis does not include mergers & acquisitions.
