Udacity

Investment Highlights

Company Overview

Udacity is where lifelong learners come to learn the skills they need, to land the jobs they want, to build the lives they deserve.

Udacity is the developer of an online learning platform offering programs designed to provide industry created practitioner skills through a series of “Nanodegree” programs consisting of online courses and real-world projects in artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, autonomous systems, and cloud computing, among other disciplines.

Udacity, Inc. is an American educational organization founded by Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky offering massive open online courses.

According to Thrun, the origin of the name Udacity comes from the company’s desire to be “audacious for you, the student“. While it originally focused on offering university-style courses, it now focuses more on vocational courses for professionals.

Udacity is the outgrowth of free computer science classes offered in 2011 through Stanford University.

Thrun has stated he hopes half a million students will enroll, after an enrollment of 160,000 students in the predecessor course at Stanford, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, and 90,000 students had enrolled in the initial two classes as of March 2012.

Udacity began as an experiment in online learning, when Stanford instructors Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig elected to offer their “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course online to anyone, for free.

The potential to educate at a global scale was awe-inspiring, and Udacity was founded to pursue a mission to democratize education.

It would take several years of intensive iteration and experimentation to clarify our focus on career advancement through mastery of in-demand skills, but today, Udacity proudly offers aspiring learners across the globe the opportunity to participate in—and contribute to—some of the most exciting and innovative fields in the world.

Udacity’s mission is to train the world’s workforce in the careers of the future. Every industry is being impacted by modern technology.

As companies everywhere adapt and transform their businesses, they’re looking to hire people with the tech skills to match their goals.

We work with the world’s technology leaders to teach these critical tech skills through our powerful and flexible digital education platform. Now even the busiest learners can be prepared to take on the most in-demand tech roles.

The company’s corporate customers look to Udacity to equip their employees with vital skills in data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and autonomous systems that companies need to compete in the digital economy.

Financials

Total Funding (June 2021) – US235M

Last funding round (December 2020) – US$75M (debt)

Enterprise Value US$874M

Team

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