VIPKid
- 🦄Became a unicorn2017
- 📈Peak valuation$3 Billion ’19
- 💔Became a Unitard2021
- 💸Last valuation—
How it happened
VIPKid was one of China's biggest online-education unicorns — at its 2019 peak roughly 100,000 US and Canadian tutors taught English to 600,000 Chinese children, supporting a valuation north of $3B backed by Tencent and Sequoia. China's July 2021 'double reduction' crackdown banned foreign tutors for mainland students, outlawing the core business, and VIPKid ended its flagship China program that November. Tutor reviews on Glassdoor trace the aftermath: veterans described bookings evaporating on the pivoted global platform even as new teachers kept being added, per-class pay stepping down until many earned less than they had years earlier, and long-standing $10 missed-class fines that stung more once a pre-dawn slot might hold a single $7 lesson.
Employee accounts paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗. See our methodology.
Source: EdSurge / ICEF Monitor / TechCrunch (valued over $3B at peak, ~2019; raised $1.1B from Tencent, Sequoia and others; July 2021 'double reduction' policy banned foreign tutors for China-based students; ended flagship China program Nov 2021)
