Drive Capital is the lead investor in e-learning startup Udacity’s series C round, which closed at $35m and also included Bertelsmann, KGaG, Recruit, Valor Capital and Cox Enterprises. Existing investors Andreessen Horrowitz as well as Peter Levine and George Zachary of CRV also participated.
As part of the investment, Mark Kvamme, founder at Drive Capital, will join the board of Udacity. The firm’s $250m Drive Capital Fund I was backed with $50m from Ohio State University in February 2014.
Udacity’s total funding now stands at $55m, following a series B round of $15m in October 2012 and a series A round of $5m in January 2012. It will use the new funding to expand into educational sectors outside of technology.
Udacity offers an online platform to corporate partners, who create courses to train future employees. Its targeted students are graduates, rather than the more traditional e-learning companies who work with universities and are aiming their offering at new students. Udacity’s partners include Google, Facebook, AT&T, Salesforce and Cloudera.
Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity, said: “We are taking specific jobs and reverse-engineering them to teach what is required and then certifying a person in that area. When we started out it was not clear that there would be a sustainable business model, but I believe we have nailed it. Since March, paying students have been increasing by 2% day over day.”
