Udacity Just Raised A Staggering $15 Million In Funding | Edudemic

"The money is flying around MOOCs like you wouldn’t believe. One of the leaders in the Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) industry, Udacity, just raised a staggering amount of money to help propel its vision of increasing the depth and breadth of its online offerings. Udacity, the online learning platform founded by former Stanford professor / Google X founder Sebastian Thrun, made the big announcement yesterday. In it, he disclosed that some of the biggest names in venture capital are now on board the Udacity train. They include Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures, and Steve Blank. In total, Udacity has now raised more than $22 million. Udacity is currently seeing more than 750,000 enrolled students (since January) and currently offers 14 courses. Doing the math, that’s a lot more students than you could ever fit into a physical classroom... So what’s Thrun and Udacity going to do with the new funds? Expect them to build up their game-driven offerings and turn their current software into a more robust platform. In my opinion, this could mean they create an API that lets schools tap in and offer course instruction using Udacity’s software. That’s just a shot in the dark, though... Another big push for Udacity in terms of revenue is the potential partnerships it can form with corporations. The teachers and admins reading this on Edudemic might recoil at this but it’s simply a goal of companies like Udacity to make money... The good news is that Udacity (and most other MOOC providers) seems to have noble intentions that involve providing a truly useful service (education) to the world. Will it work? Will it become completely corporate-focused? Only time will tell. In the meantime, you can expect to hear a lot more about Udacity thanks to this big round of fundraising..."