It has become an annual tradition at Edtech Insiders to look back at how our predictions for the year played out, and to make new predictions about the year in edtech to come.
We have a 2024 edtech predictions podcast episode coming out soon with the long form version of our thoughts on this topic. If you like what you read here, make sure to tune in to the pod for our full predictions, as well as additional context and commentary on last year’s predictions and how we stacked up.
Without further ado, here are our edtech predictions for 2024!
Older companies purchasing newer AI solutions based companies
Ben: My prediction is that in ChatGPT, in Gemini, you’ll be able to access omni-modal AI (AI content moving between text, audio, images, and videos in any direction and order, and without text necessarily playing the role of a bridge between content types). You're gonna start getting all types of content outputs whenever you are using an AI tool, and you won’t have to use different tools and different searches to get different content types. You're able to move fluidly between all of the modes of content.
And, I think we're going to have a wave of AI boyfriends and girlfriends coming to high schools. I think there's going to be a big parent freak out around “what are my kids saying and talking to and doing” with their AI. I don't think people realize how social media has these elements where people kind of go down the rabbit hole. AI is like that to infinity… and for the teen brain AI is an incredibly attractive friend who always reinforces what you are thinking and saying, and loves to talk to you anytime, and also can create all kinds of voices and images and so on.
I think that that's going to be a defining theme really for four or five years
Alex: My prediction is that AI Super Teachers will actually become more real this year. You will basically have characters that are consistent for students. You will be able to ask questions to them, and they can tutor you on anything. You can start to feel comfortable with them almost as a peer or, you know, another context. So I'm excited about that.
My other prediction is that I think you're going to see a lot of older guard companies purchasing and then integrating AI solutions, and in some ways cutting off from the rest of the edtech world, sort of making sure that they own it. And that might be AI tutors. That might be content generation. That might be personalization engines. That might be translation engines. These are functionalities that the big tech companies could really use in huge ways. For example, if you have a company that does translation of content into many different languages or into speech, who could better use that than a big publisher that has a huge long tail of content?
Funding and Market Predictions
Takeaways:
Prolonged edtech winter
VC picking up
Numbers moving closer to actual size of the edtech market
Ben: My prediction is we're going to have a prolonged edtech winter. And I think VC is going to pick back up in 2024 because interest rates are going to, you know, they've kind of peaked and are coming back to Earth.
I do think that there's going to be a number of AI companies that generate significant revenue, but I think we are in for another down year and I think the funds may be in for a tough year and potentially low hiring or consolidating. I'm going to double down and say more mergers and acquisitions and a focus on profitability as well.
Alex: It's hard for me to imagine that this field, given all the technological changes, given the fact that education is not going anywhere, that there's still more and more people who need education… I just don't understand. It feels like a running scared market correction of all of the generalist investors running away is what we're actually seeing here. It doesn't seem to me like, oh this is where we actually should be. Like, these really really low numbers where we are now are not the actual size of the edtech market.
My prediction is that I'm a little bit optimistic. I think we're going to see the numbers come back up. I think they're not going to come up to 2021 levels for sure. They're probably not even going to come back up to 2022 levels, but if they make up half the distance between where we are now in 2022, that's still a, you know, doubling or tripling of where we are in 2023. I'm optimistic that there's going to be some level of bounce back.
Global Edtech Predictions
Takeaways:
New global unicorn out of LATAM
AI Fueled Edtech Micro-Companies in Asia
Ben: My prediction is we will have a new global unicorn that's coming out of LATAM, and my guess is it's Mexico or Brazil that's going to produce it. But I think on our list of unicorns that we're going to talk about next year, one of those new unicorns is going to be coming out of LATAM.
Alex: My prediction is that we are going to see more AI fueled edtech micro-companies in Asia. If you think about where are places where you could have a small group of people with advanced education, and AI expertise, who come together and get really rapid traction by building something that just catches a flame. I think that's gonna happen in Asia. I think that's gonna happen in Singapore. I think it's gonna happen in South Korea. I think that's gonna happen in Indonesia. Especially around some of the education hubs there, the places where there are some really advanced colleges, it may happen in Japan and India, too.
These locations are becoming hubs for edtech in various ways. I think Seoul is going to become a serious hub for edtech. There's so much content there, so much passion for the field.
K12 Predictions
Takeaways:
AI will tip into extremely positive or extremely negative light
Focus on talent and professional development
Ben: There's an increasing focus on professional development and employment pathways in K12 because of the teacher shortages. How do I train up the teachers that I do have? Because that's who I'm stuck with for better or for worse. How do I take my paraprofessionals and other people who are in the system and train them up to be educators?
I think that AI is not going to be in the headline around a lot of these efforts. It's going to be embedded in the tools, it's going to be embedded in the curriculum, but it isn’t going to be the headline. I think there will be way more AI utilization, but not a desire to buy another AI tool. It's going to be much more like I want personalized curriculum from my curriculum providers, and AI is the enablement of that.
I think career support stuff in K12 could actually be a very attractive vertical, since talent is the number one issue for schools and it will be for next year.
Alex: The thing that I think is going to be interesting about this next year is that we're in this race between basically the good and the bad of AI in K12, like the disastrous, chaotic, horrible things that might, and probably will happen in this huge K12 world where people bully each other or fall in love with an AI or something bad happens. Or, the amazing possible outcomes that have yet to reach major headlines. What we have to do as an edtech community is get ahead of it and have positive use cases, have incredible things happening with K12, especially younger students and edtech so that people realize that this stuff is so powerful.
I don't know which direction this is gonna go in, but something's gonna happen this year. I still think it's just a matter of time before, you know, the right story happens in some school where people say, oh my gosh, this is a huge deal. I've been pleasantly and very deeply surprised that the narrative has sort of stayed in the sort of middle lane all year. I think sometime this year something's gonna tilt in one way or the other, and I'm hoping it's positive.
Higher Ed Predictions
Takeaways:
Distributed and fractional model success
Higher ed forced to change
Ben: I think most universities and schools are going to be further distracted by the politics of campus. And the winners of that distraction, from a business standpoint, will be non-campus based higher ed options. More and more people will say it's not worth the return to go to an in person, on campus higher ed institution.
I’m bullish on online schools and fractional credentialing schools and programs. I think that those are going to have continued momentum and continued staying power.
The way it might play out for these programs in higher ed is better retention, better completion rates. I'm probably not putting money into edX, and I'm probably not putting money into Coursera here, but this idea of the universities that have pivoted to distributed and fractional models, I think that they will be successful.
Alex: The higher ed system just keeps rolling along and increasing their tuition by X percent every year and talking to their trustees. At some point, I have so little sympathy for them as a group. They talk about the ivory tower as this famous metaphor for sort of being detached from the rest of the world. But I almost think it's like head in the ground at this point.
It was really starting in the 80s that the tuition crisis really started. You know, divorcing this idea of college being worth it. The numbers are not on their side. They have not been serving the populace in the way that they think they are. What this all adds up to for me is that I think this year we're going to start seeing colleges have basically these sort of crisis strategies. They are going to realize people just do not respect us at all, and we need to change that perception.
I think colleges are finally going to be forced to change. And if they are, edtech is right there. There's so many amazing ways to deliver education in different ways, at scale, globally, and at low cost.
Workforce Predictions
Takeaways:
Employers offering upskilling / nearskilling
Workforce offerings shifting to be about upskilling within a company
Ben: I think workforce employers are really more around near-skilling these days. It's not even totally up-skilling. It's just like, you have a job. What are the new things you need to do to keep doing that exact same job? And I think that's kind of where we are. And I don't think education as a benefit is going to continue to be a thing.
Alex: I talked to the 360 Learning folks at one point and they had this really interesting epiphany, which is basically that it's been almost impossible for every individual company in the past to create a hierarchy of skills and a hierarchy of positions and actually organize what it looks like for people to move around and upskill within the company and get to new paths.
Until now. AI actually can do this very well. It can take not only job description data, but it can take actual performance data. It can actually look at what people do on a daily basis and back fit that to training, create automatic training based on it. I think Guild is doing that kind of thing, maybe not with AI yet, but they're doing more big deals with the Walmarts of the world instead of it being like, hey, we'll get your Walmart employees access to these different universities so that they stay with Walmart and they get their degrees and they have a better life. Now it's more like we'll help your Walmart employees figure out how to become a Walmart manager, figure out how to become a corporate employee. That becomes much more specific to Walmart, a big contract that's going to last years and years, right?
And it's not nearly as dependent on usage, and it's not nearly as dependent on retention as the other models are. It's not about how many people did it and how many people stayed with the company. It's really about actual outcomes.For example. we got this many people to transfer jobs inside Walmart. We got this many people to upskill. So I think this is a maturing of the space, but it's just way less sexy.
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On December 6, Google launched Gemini, their newest AI model intended to compete with ChatGPT.
Gemini’s multi-modal focus – engaging with text, images, video, and audio in the same environment rather than as separate features – is what we think might separate Gemini from ChatGPT in the long run. The possibilities that multi-modal function unlocks in the edtech sector (like versatile, accessible, and customizable product features for learners of all types to leverage the same tool) gets us really excited, and we are watching closely to see where this goes as Gemini continues to be developed.
Of the tens of thousands of beta tester students that have used their existing AI offerings, 75% of users said the tools were 'helpful' or 'very helpful' for their studies. We are excited to watch how this legacy education company continues to work with new AI technology and implement it into a more traditional education product.
While the concern with wide-scale regulatory action for technology like AI tends to be that the market in that region could be stunted, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the AI Act would help the development of technology that does not threaten people's safety and rights, describing the agreements as a: "unique legal framework for the development of AI you can trust".
This will be a long term movement to watch, but we are excited to see how the vote goes on this Act and what the longer term implications of rules like this will do for the EU, and other countries who follow their lead.
While 2023 was a year to “bounce back” from COVID learning loss, learning is still down, with only third-graders exceeding the pre-COVID learning averages.
Secondly, there was some positive data around the efficacy of virtual tutoring product OnYourMark, which offers individualized reading tutors. A study found that among 1,000 students enrolled in Texas charter schools, participating in OnYourMark resulted in kindergartners gaining the equivalent of 26 extra days of learning in letter sounds and first graders receiving 55 additional days of sound decoding.
With a challenging year in edtech behind us, and uncertainty about what 2024 will hold, we recommend you take a read through this report to get your bearings for where we are now and what 2024 might bring when it comes to raising in the new year.
If you haven’t already, check out EdTech Garage! They are a community for edtech professionals in Europe and they do some amazing interviews with founders and players supporting early-stage edtech startups across Europe.
They recently did a great interview with Nick Hernandez, the CEO at 360Learning that we recommend giving a look.
This edition of the EdTech Insiders Newsletter is sponsored by ISTE.
At ISTE, we help edtech companies improve products through valuable feedback from expert educators, connect with classroom influencers and district decision makers and provide exclusive third-party validation to help you stand out in the crowded edtech market. Explore the different opportunities ISTE has available for you!
We have had some amazing guests on The Edtech Insiders Podcast in the last few weeks. Make sure to check out our recent episodes, including:
Chris Parrish, Co-Founder and President of Partnerships at the leading experiential learning company, Podium Education.
Märt Lume, Co-Founder of Futuclass, a company building curriculum-aligned Virtual Reality games to enrich natural science education for secondary school students.
Nikil Ragav, CEO and founder of inventXYZ, a program to integrate hands-on real-world STEM and CS into every core high school course.
Maria Barrera, Founder and CEO of Clayful, the first on-demand mental health support program for students.
Funding, Mergers, and Acquisitions
Our latest reporting on funding, mergers, and acquisitions comes from Matt Tower’s publication EdTech Thoughts. Matt does an incredible job of covering the latest funding, news, industry updates, and more! If you love Edtech Insiders, be sure to subscribe to Matt’s newsletter as well.
Clayful raises $7M / US, Mental Health / Reach Capital, Ovo Fund, Common Sense Ventures, Charter School Growth Fund, Wisdom Ventures, Google Latino Founders Fund
Augment raises $6M / France, Degree Alternatives / RTP Global, Motier Ventures, Origins Fund, Kima Ventures, BPI France, Financière Saint James
Nolej raises €3M / France, AI Tutoring / Educapital, Square Knowledge Ventures
I love the idea that AI will not be the headline, rather AI will support the efforts to solve certain problems. That supports the middle road stance, where AI is useful because it's not necessarily the main focus, the focus is on outcomes with AI.
I also wonder if, Alex, your optimism for funding to be a little more level in 2024 is related to the fact that schools are paying more attention to the data and paying more attention to how & what they're investing in.
It also seems to be a shift in how people are paying attention to EdTech as a field. While generalist investors turned away in 2023, the last 3 years have allowed EdTech to be a part of the pubic narrative of education and learning. Especially as Higher Ed has made some big headlines & Workforce tools have expanded.
I love the idea that AI will not be the headline, rather AI will support the efforts to solve certain problems. That supports the middle road stance, where AI is useful because it's not necessarily the main focus, the focus is on outcomes with AI.
I also wonder if, Alex, your optimism for funding to be a little more level in 2024 is related to the fact that schools are paying more attention to the data and paying more attention to how & what they're investing in.
It also seems to be a shift in how people are paying attention to EdTech as a field. While generalist investors turned away in 2023, the last 3 years have allowed EdTech to be a part of the pubic narrative of education and learning. Especially as Higher Ed has made some big headlines & Workforce tools have expanded.
Love this!