← Back to the club

17 Education & Technology

EdtechChina
New to Unitard
📉 Public < $1B
Peak $2.5 BillionRecorded estimate
~-97%
from peak
  1. 🦄
    Became a unicorn
    2020
  2. 📈
    Peak valuation
    $2.5 Billion ’21
  3. 💔
    Became a Unitard
    2021
  4. 💸
    Last valuation estimate
    ~$75M
Current status
Public (NYSE: YQ); the 2021 crackdown gutted its K-12 tutoring business

The rise & fall

5 moments · 2011–2021

The key moments.

2011
Founded as 17zuoye
Online homework tools that hooked into Chinese classrooms, later layered with live-streaming K-12 classes and AI grading.
Wikipedia
Dec 2020
Lists on the NYSE at the edtech boom's height
ADSs price around $10.50, valuing the company near $2.5B.
TechNode
2021
The peak: $2.5B$2.5B
China's online-education mania crests just after the debut — and Beijing is already drafting the rules that will end it.
SCMP
Jul 2021
'Double reduction' bans its core business
Beijing outlaws for-profit tutoring in core school subjects — the heart of the company — overnight, gutting it alongside Yuanfudao, Zuoyebang and Gaotu.
SCMP
2021
Slips out of the club
The stock collapses to around $2, leaving the market cap a tiny fraction of the IPO valuation.
SCMP

How it happened

17 Education & Technology (known in China as Yiqi/17zuoye) ran live-streaming K-12 classes and AI-powered homework tools, and listed on the NYSE in December 2020 near a $2.5B valuation at the height of the edtech boom.

Months later, China's July 2021 'double reduction' policy banned for-profit tutoring in core school subjects — the heart of its business — and the stock collapsed to around $2. Like peers Yuanfudao, Zuoyebang and Gaotu, 17 Education was gutted by the crackdown, its market value falling to a tiny fraction of its peak.

Source: TechNode / SCMP / Verdict (Dec 2020 NYSE IPO ~$2.5B, ADSs ~$10.50; July 2021 'double reduction' crackdown banned for-profit K-12 tutoring; stock fell to ~$2, market cap a tiny fraction)

Founder

  • Andy Chang Liu
    Founder & CEO
    No public profile matched

Disclosed investors (11)

Historical funding participation; lists may be incomplete and do not establish current ownership or investor losses.

* Lead in a funding round · Crunchbase ↗ · 2026-10-13 · Methodology · Leaderboard

More from the club

Same sector · Edtech
Byju's$22BYuanfudao$15.5BChegg$14BGaotu Techedu$13BZuoyebang$10B
Same fate · regulatory collapse
VIPKid$3B
🦄