Coursera secures $64 mn in Series D; aims to strengthen global reach

Online platform for higher education Coursera has announced receiving of $64 million in Series D funding round, which will enable the company's total capital raised to date to $210.3 million.

Coursera will use the latest round to fund efforts in its fast-growing enterprise business (Coursera for Business), to expand its master's degree portfolio, and to accelerate product innovations that take advantage of the platform's unmatched scale with over 26 million registered learners globally.

"As the industry leader in online higher education, we have a massive opportunity ahead of us in preparing people, companies, and governments to respond to the changing nature of jobs and to take on the urgent challenges of workforce transformation," said Chief Executive Rick Levin, Coursera.

"This round of funding enables us to continue innovating across our platform to deliver better learner outcomes, and to accelerate the momentum we have in our new initiatives-enterprise and degrees," added Levin.

Coursera recently launched Coursera for Business-a platform to help companies manage workforce transformation at scale. Within a short span, it has been embraced by more than 50 companies around the world, including BCG, BNY Mellon, L'Oreal, Paypal, and Air France-KLM.

In January this year, Coursera also launched Coursera for Governments and Nonprofits, joining forces with government and local institutions to prepare their communities for the jobs of the future. These partnerships have quickly scaled to cover efforts in a number of countries, such as the US, Pakistan, Egypt, Malaysia, and Singapore.

In addition to over 2,000 courses and 180 Specialisations, Coursera has begun offering fully-accredited online master's degrees in order to serve the full spectrum of educational needs. Encouraged by the success of the first two degrees it launched in 2015, it recently announced two more degrees-a Master's in Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OMIE) from HEC Paris and a Master's of Accounting (iMSA) from the University of Illinois.

"We are excited to see Coursera emerge as the world's learning platform, with a highly engaged global learner base and educational content from leading universities and top companies," said founder and CEO GSV Asset Management, Michael Moe.

"In a global marketplace and knowledge-based economy, education makes the difference not only for how well an individual does, but for companies, and for that matter, countries," added Moe.

Within five years of its founding, Coursera has emerged as the world's largest online platform for higher education with more than 26 million learners, 150 university partners, and 2000+ courses.

With the deepest catalog of courses, innovations like micro-credentials that learners can stack into degrees, and machine learning-powered skills and content matching systems, Coursera is well positioned to equip more people around the world with the skills they need to close gaps in high-demand fields like data science, computer science, and business.