New York EdTech Week, the global education innovation festival in NYC taking place December 18-20, 2017, attracts over a thousand tech innovators, investors, policymakers, and others, with the goal of making new advancements in education technology. Jonathan Harber, Co-Founder of StartEd and Producer of the event, was with us to discuss the upcoming event.
NYC-based EdTech firms have received $1 billion in venture capital investment between 2008 and 2017, making up 12.5% of VC investment in the industry across the country. Forty-seven companies have been acquired since 2000, the most of any city in the country. San Francisco/Silicon Valley had the second-most acquisitions in that time with twenty-nine. Harber breaks down how NYC has been able to position itself ahead of Silicon Valley as a hub for EdTech.
Harber points to the extensive ecosystem that has built the foundation for New York to be a hub for EdTech innovation. He emphasizes that the city is home to the most significant learning infrastructure in the world, including 55 public and private colleges and universities, 2,666 K-12 schools, and nearly 2 million students.
The Trump administration has issued its first warnings to online services that offer unofficial versions of popular drugs like the blockbuster obesity treatment Wegovy.
Parents of teenagers who died by suicide after interacting with AI chatbots are set to testify before Congress.
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The Federal Trade Commission has launched an inquiry into several social media and artificial intelligence companies about the potential harms to children and teenagers who use their AI chatbots as companions.
Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
