After speculation and conflicting reports, VIPKid announced that it has indeed received additional funding. The Series E round, led by Tencent, was announced on WeChat yesterday by the online tutoring company that connects Chinese kids with North American teachers for English lessons.
For a late-stage round, few other details were disclosed, including the funding amount. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that this latest round would total $150 million, considerably less than the company’s original target of $500 million. VIPKid so far has not responded to a request for comment.
Founded in 2013, VIPKid has raised more than $825 million prior to this Series E round. In the announcement, the Beijing-based company claimed it has more than 700,000 students and 90,000 North American teachers on its platform as of August 2019.
This is Tencent’s third investment in VIPKid, which said in the statement that the new funding will support efforts to improve its content, technology, talent development and operational efficiency. The two parties also pledged to deepen their partnership across online education, artificial intelligence and cloud services.
