A business using Kahoot's platform. Image: Kahoot
With its latest funding, Kahoot plans to invest in R&D and explore expansion and acquisition opportunities.
On Thursday (11 June), Norwegian learning platform Kahoot announced that it has raised $28m in new equity through a private placement of 7.5m new shares. The company began to list some of its shares on Oslo’s Merkur Market in October 2019.
It said that the private placement also comprised 16.5m existing shares and amounted to $90m in total. The new equity included participation from existing backer Northzone and Kahoot CEO Eilert Hanoa.
To date, Kahoot has raised more than $110m in funding and the educational gaming company is now valued at $1.39bn, according to TechCrunch.
In a statement, the business said: “The private placement attracted very strong interest from high-quality institutional investors in Norway and internationally and was multiple times over-subscribed.”
Funding plans
Kahoot has created a game-based learning platform for schools, organisations and families that makes it easy to create, share and play learning games. In the last 12 months, it has seen more than a billion participating players from more than 200 countries.
The company said it has experienced accelerated adoption in recent months as organisations seek engaging and user-friendly ways to build culture, educate and interact while schools may be closed and teams may be working remotely. The start-up said that it now has 19m active accounts and 260,000 paid subscriptions including teachers and professionals.
With the fresh funding, Kahoot plans to build on this momentum, fuelling further growth and continuing the expansion of its game-based learning platform. The start-up plans to invest further in research and development, product innovations and strategic expansion.
‘An extraordinary year’
Hanoa, CEO of Kahoot Group, said: “We are thrilled to have secured additional capital to help fuel the next phase of Kahoot’s growth, allowing us to further invest in product innovation, as well as consider new strategic partnerships and acquisitions to further strengthen our platform.”
He said that “2020 has been an extraordinary year for Kahoot”, as the start-up has developed and launched new initiatives to build a large learning community.
“We also added a record number of users and paid subscribers for our offerings in 2020 and we are thrilled to have secured additional capital to help fuel the next phase of Kahoot’s growth.”
