Chegg
EdtechUSA
New to Unitard
📉 Public < $1B
Peak $14 BillionToday
−99%
from peak
- 🦄Became a unicorn2017
- 📈Peak valuation$14 Billion ’21
- 💔Became a Unitard~2023
- 💸Last valuation~$79.9M
Current status
Public (CHGG)
Live · CHGG· NYSE
as of 2026-09-21
$0.72▼ 5.26% today
≈ $79.9 Million market cap · −99.4% from peak
The rise & fall
8 moments · 2005–2025The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
2005
2005
Founded as a textbook-rental company
Campus logistics first; the subscription “homework help” gold mine comes later.
Wikipedia
2017
2017
Crosses $1B as a subscription business
Chegg Study makes the model work.
Macrotrends
Feb 2021
Feb 2021
The peak: ~$14B in the remote-school boom$14B
The stock touches $115 as homework moves online.
Macrotrends
May 1 ’23
May 1 ’23
A ChatGPT problem, and a ChatGPT-powered response
Chegg says student interest in ChatGPT is hurting new-customer growth. In the same earnings announcement it pitches CheggMate, its own study tool powered by ChatGPT and developed with OpenAI.
2023
2023
Slips out of the club
Free AI answers the questions subscribers used to pay for.
Macrotrends
2023–25
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2023–25
Glassdoor reviews put a human face on the AI squeeze: employees described near-quarterly layoff rounds clustered around earnings from mid-2023 on, RSU grants shriveling with the stock, and India-based subject-matter experts watching student questions dry up.
2025
2025
Deeper cuts, strategic review
More restructuring as revenue keeps sliding.
CNBC
Today
Today
Still in the club — and still trading
Live · CHGG · NYSEas of 2026-09-21
$0.72▼ 5.26% today≈ $79.9M cap · −99.4% from peak
💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.
How it happened
Chegg is an education-technology company offering textbook rentals and online homework and study help, reaching a ~$14B market cap in 2021. The rise of free AI tools such as ChatGPT eroded its core homework-help subscription business, sending users and revenue into decline. Its public market capitalization fell roughly 99% to around $150M by 2026. The company's India-based subject-matter experts, meanwhile, said student questions dried up as free AI took hold.
Source: CNBC/TechStartups
Founders & leadership
- Dan RosensweigCEO (long-time; returned as CEO Oct 2025)
- Osman Rashidco-founder & CEO (saw the textbook market as the thing to disrupt)
- Aayush Phumbhraco-founder (rebranded the service as Chegg in 2007)
- Josh Carlsonco-founder (left in Feb 2006, before the Chegg rebrand)No public profile matched
Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-20. See our methodology.
