IBL News | New York
Class.com will be the new proprietor of Blackboard Collaborate, once the transaction process is completed this week.
Class Technologies (Class.com) acquired the virtual conferencing tool from Anthololgy, paying $210 million last May.
The tool will be renamed Class Collaborate. About 1,750 educational institutions and organizations were using it as Blackboard’s clients.
Michael Chasen, co-founder and CEO of Class and former CEO of Blackboard, announced that the tool will be changing with new features. “Educators and learners expect innovative and advanced solutions that enhance the online and hybrid learning experience,” he said.
“The long-term vision is to bring together the best of both products to develop a learning platform that can support the various ways in which institutions want to engage in synchronous learning now and into the future,” the company added in a PR release.
Under the transaction, Class will be the preferred virtual meeting technology partner for Blackboard. “The two teams are working closely together on joint go-to-market initiatives, including a large presence at the upcoming Anthology Together conference in Orlando, Florida.”
Class is a heavily funded company after attracting $160 million within a year. It raised a combination of equity and debt from investors such as SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Insight Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Owl Ventures, Emergence Capital, Educational Testing Services (ETS), Arizona State University (ASU), Maven Ventures, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Fund, SWaN & Legend, Chimera Investment, Sound Ventures, Catalysis Capital Management, Guy Oseary, Bill Tai, and Super Bowl champion and entrepreneur Tom Brady.
