Yuanfudao
- 🦄Became a unicorn2018
- 📈Peak valuation$15.5 Billion ’21
- 💔Became a Unitard2021
- 💸Last valuation—
How it happened
Yuanfudao was the world's most valuable edtech company, a Chinese K-12 tutoring giant — with live online classes, an automated homework-checking app and a Q&A service — that hit a $15.5B valuation backed by Tencent, Hillhouse and DST Global after raising more than $2.5B in late 2020. Months later, China's July 2021 'double reduction' policy banned for-profit tutoring in core school subjects, the heart of Yuanfudao's business. The company froze its IPO, pulled its enormous advertising spend and cut staff as its core revenue was regulated away, erasing most of a once-staggering valuation.
Source: Bloomberg / Class Central / TechCrunch (valued ~$15.5B, world's most valuable edtech, after a $2.5B+ Series G Dec 2020 from Tencent, Hillhouse, DST; July 2021 'double reduction' crackdown banned for-profit core-subject tutoring; froze IPO, slashed marketing and staff)
