Education technology provider Chegg agreed yesterday to purchase UK-based language learning app developer Busuu yesterday for approximately $436m in cash, allowing educational publisher McGraw Hill to exit.
Founded in 2008, Busuu operates a social media platform enabling users to learn foreign languages, combining artificial intelligence-powered courses and a community of native speakers.
The company has more than 500,000 paying subscribers learning a total of 12 languages, and the acquisition is set to boost its presence in the US market.
Investment firm GP Bullhound provided an undisclosed amount of funding for Busuu in May 2020, five years after McGraw Hill had supplied $6.5m of series B funding.
The company had previously received $5.2m in prize money at a pitch day organised by SevenVentures, a corporate venturing subsidiary of media company ProSiebenSat.1, in 2013.
ProFounders Capital had provided $4.5m in series A funding alongside unnamed private investors in 2012, the year after Busuu closed roughly $1.4m in funding from angel investors Martin Varsavsky and Johann Hansmann.
Bernhard Niesner, Busuu’s co-founder and chief executive, said: “We are proud and excited to be joining the Chegg family, a world leading edtech company that puts students first. This partnership will give us an opportunity to leverage Chegg’s tremendous reach to fuel our expansion, particularly in the US.
“Our vision is to empower everyone in the world through languages, and we believe our relationship with Chegg will enable us to achieve this goal even faster.”
