Udacity secures $105m

Udacity, an online course provider founded by Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun, has secured $105m, bringing the company’s valuation to $1bn.

Media conglomerate Bertlesmann led the round, with support from Google Ventures, and investment firms Bailllie Gifford and Emerson Collective. Existing backers also joined the round. Since founding in 2012, the firm has raised $160m.

Despite Thrun’s original claims that the massive open online course movement will cause all but 10 universities to close within fifty years, the company ran into issues early on with its business model of offering courses for free. Udacity has since changed its model, with Thrun saying that it’s not currently at its final business model, but that it is “much closer” to it.

Udacity is now offering nanodegrees in areas such as machine learning and app development for a certain amount in tuition fees per month. It’s also working with tech giants such as Google or Facebook to develop its courses, a opposed to peers Coursera and Edx which work mostly with universities.