Almost a quarter of a new year has passed. In the last three months, 70 Chinese education companies raised more than 842 million USD (5.33 billion RMB), based on the deals disclosed. Deals are concentrated in English learning, early childhood education, K12 and STEAM education.

17zuoye emerged as an Edtech Unicorn

17zuoye (一起作业), or Homework Together, announced the completion of an E-round financing of 250 million USD, led by Temasek Holdings and followed by CITIC Limited. After the E-round financing, it was valued over 1 billion USD, which made it into the unicorn. Homework Together also announced its new brand “Together” to the public, and released the Socrates intelligent learning system.

Homework Together is a Chinese product for distributing & grading homework driven by big data. It synchronizes students’ progress in school, provides STEAM contents that match subject ability and helps teachers and students ease the burden and increases efficiency through big data and artificial intelligence. By March 2018, it has entered 31 provinces, 363 cities, and nearly 120,000 schools, with over 600 million registered users (including 1.9 million teachers, 20 million parents, and 40 million students).

Socrates is an intelligent learning system, which can personalize recommendations for questions based on students’ learning characteristic. It aims to help students acquire knowledge and meanwhile improve their comprehensive ability.

After this financing, “Together” Technology will invest more in artificial intelligence, and create the high quality of STEAM education and promote education welfare. Temporarily, the company does not have the specific plan for going public. It only claims determination on providing high-quality education contents to the students.

In 2018Q1, 16 deals exceeded 10 million USD funding

DadaABC, the Global Real-Time Classroom Platform, has secured its C round funding of 100 million USD in January. It is an innovative English training institution in China, which focuses on “one-on-one online tutoring”. In 2017, DadaABC also launched French, and Spanish learning courses in an effort to meet a rising demand among Chinese students to master a second foreign language. Baby English(宝宝玩英语) raised 24 million USD (150 million RMB) of B round. It is one of the biggest online English language education institution for preschoolers in China. The online classes are grouped by age: children at 0–2, children from 2 to 4, and children from 4–6.

Apart from English learning sector, early childhood education is also favored by investors. Growth Insurance (成长保) raised 23 million USD (150 million RMB) of B round in March, led by ZhenFund, which was founded by New Oriental co-founders. Growth Insurance provides assessment, online tutoring and courses for kids aged 4–12. Kaishustory (凯叔讲故事) raised 24 million USD (156 million RMB) for its series B funding round. The company was launched by former CCTV host Wang Kai and represents a children’s content brand focusing on children’s stories, with additional products such as audio series and online parenting courses.

VIP Coach(VIP陪练) and Find Intelligence Piano each raised 30.8 million USD (200 million RMB), which implied the investor appetite for the arts education. In terms of technology education, Bell education raised 30.8 million USD (200 million RMB) in March of B round, which is a kid robotic/AI education provider in China.