China-based online children’s education platform Huohua Siwei raised $150m on Wednesday in a series E1 round featuring Longfor Capital, an investment arm of real estate developer Longfor Properties, Caixin Global reported.
Investment firm KKR led the round, while GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, Sequoia Capital China and IDG Capital also participated.
Huohua Siwei runs an online education platform that utilises artificial intelligence to teach subjects such as mathematics, Chinese and English to pupils from kindergarten through primary school along with critical thinking skills.
The series E1 financing follows five months of growth, the company having added some 100,000 paying users to the platform since April to increase the number of customers to approximately 250,000. It said it spends more than $4m on research and development efforts per month.
The round brought Huohua Siwei’s total funding to $340m since it was founded in 2017, it said. Short-form video app developer Beijing Kuaishou Technology supplied $30m in series D-plus funding for the company in April this year.
KKR and GGV Capital co-led the company’s $85m series D round in August 2019, with participation from Longfor Properties’ Longhu Capital investment vehicle, IDG Capital, Lightspeed China Partners, Northern Light Venture Capital, Sequoia China, Hike Capital and GSR Ventures.
Longhu Capital and Northern Light Venture Capital had previously co-led a $40m series C round in March 2019, with contributions from Sequoia China, IDG Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Hike Capital and GSR Ventures.
Huohua Siwei had secured $20m in series B-plus funding from Northern Light, Sequoia China, IDG Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Hike Capital and GSR Ventures in June 2018.
IDG Capital and Hike Capital co-led the company’s $15m series B round the month before, following an undisclosed amount in a 2016 series A co-led by Lightspeed and IDG Capital.
