D.C. education technology company EverFi made a splash for raising its mammoth $40 million round about a year ago with investments from Google's Eric Schmidt and Amazon's Jeff Bezos. Now, calling that round a mammoth seems far-fetched as EverFi announces today it closed a $190 million round—the third largest edtech funding round in history.
According to a press release, The Rise Fund from TPG Growth led the round with a $120 million investment. TPG Growth is a private equity firm that has also backed startups like Uber and Airbnb. Main Street Advisors and Advance Publications (who also owns our parent company American Inno) joined the round. Existing investors Bezos, Schmidt and Twitter co-founder Evan Williams contributed to the round, as well.
An investment from Rise is no easy feat, and this investment marks the debut one for the newly formed group. Arne Duncan, former U.S. Secretary of Education, recently joined Rise as a senior adviser, as an example of the group's clout.
“EverFi was founded on the idea that we could harness innovative, digital education to engage learners on some of the country’s most intractable issues—financial education, sexual assault prevention, workplace health, diversity and inclusion and more,” said EverFi co-founder and CEO Tom Davidson in a statement. “Through this investment from The Rise Fund, we gain a partner that is not only interested in our ability to grow as a company, but also our ability to bring true education impact to all learners, regardless of zip code.”
News of the latest investment comes a week after EverFi acquired Austin-based startup Workplace Answers, an online compliance training developer that provided online faculty and staff training on campus issues like sexual harassment prevention training. The combined companies serve over 1,700 campuses. (EverFi also won DC Inno's 2017 Tech Madness Championship earlier this month.)
EverFi has about 450 employees, with 200 alone in one office, and is based in D.C. The recent raise bring EverFi's total funding to date up to $251 million. DC Inno has reached out to EverFi and will update the story as information becomes available.
Image via EverFi
Clarification: A previous version of this article misstated how many employees EverFi has in total. The company has 450 total, 200 in one office.
