South Korea-based intelligent education software provider Riiid completed a $175m round backed by telecoms and internet conglomerate SoftBank’s second Vision Fund. The investment, by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, pushed the intelligent education technology producer’s total funding to $250m. Riiid intends to use the fresh funding to build out research and development and data labelling hubs across the United States, Canada and Ghana.
Founded in 2014, Riiid is developing an artificial intelligence-based online tutoring solution which personalises education. Its app, dubbed Santa, helps students to prepare for English language competency exams. The company claims it has become the number one in education app sales in Korea and Japan, counting more than two million users.
The company is part of the broader education and edtech space, which has enjoyed much attention from corporate venture investors, as the GCV Analytics bar chart below illustrates. Last year, we reported a record number of corporate-backed deals in this space (92), along with a record level of total estimated capital in them, amounting to $6.46bn. These figures were up from $1.89bn over 75 rounds in 2019. The pandemic and stay-at-home orders appear to have driven up both interest in the space and valuations. As for the first five months of this year, we have already tracked 42 deals worth an estimated total of $2.14bn, which suggest that the momentum gained during the first year of the pandemic is still sustained.
