Tutoring and educator marketplace GoStudent GmBH said today that it raised $95 million in what it called a strategic fundraise with the intent to pursue an artificial intelligence-driven future for its platform.

The funds were raised with participation from Deutsche Bank and other investors including Left Lane Capital, DN Capital, Tencent, Prosus, DST, Coatue and Softbank Vision Fund 2. This newest funding round brings the total raised by the company to more than $781 million, according to Crunchbase.

GoStudent boasts one of the world’s largest tutoring platforms that provides a way to connect students and educators. It operates by providing personalized matching of students and tutors based on level, learning needs and the personality of the child so that they will get the most of lessons. From there, they are offered one on one tutoring with flexible hours based on their needs.

To approach this goal, GoStudent has been on an acquisition spree in the past two years, including buying the educational technology companies Seneca Learning, Tus Media and Fox Learning. Most recently the company acquired the offline tutoring business Studienkreis GmBH in December, creating a large network of tutors in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

More recently, GoStudent turned its attention toward hybrid learning technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence to bolster its tools. After seeing how AI can empower all manner of different types of interaction and learning, the company unveiled a plan to use the technology on its platform in May.

“By offering AI-driven study support or virtual reality lessons in group environments, alongside traditional tutoring, a truly bespoke learning path can be created for each individual child — readying them for their future,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Felix Ohswald.

GoStudent intends to build an AI-driven lesson planner trained on local curriculum that will save tutors an average of 15 minutes per lesson. This would be a tremendous amount of time considering the more than 23,000 tutors on the platform and the amount of time spent with students, and it would enable tutors to spend more time with children rather than planning. The company will also introduce AI-driven content learning to the platform to allow students to study between lessons.

“More immediately, though, families will have total flexibility via our hybrid model,”  said Ohswald. “If the preference is for offline tutoring, but the family is traveling for summer, one-on-one online lessons can be booked to ensure momentum is not lost.”

The company’s AI plans follow a newly launched virtual reality language platform GoVR. The new platform went online in June and offers tutor-led VR group language learning experiences in immersive environments that allow students to work on their foreign language speaking abilities while in virtual “real-life settings.”

By putting students in immersive, virtual spaces together, GoStudent seeks to provide them a space where they can gather socially, although they’re remote from each other, in a way that they can practice their language skills. This way it’s as if they’re in the same room together and can see and hear each other, which can greatly enhance the educational experience beyond simply having a video call with multiple faces in a grid.

Across its tutoring and educational marketplace and learning tools, GoStudent supports more than 11 million families across more than 15 countries and books more than 1 million tutoring lessons globally each month.

Photo: GoStudent