Education Technology · Profile from Education Technology Research Companion
Coursera, Inc.
The Stanford-born MOOC platform that turned free university courses into a public, AI-era skills marketplace. It sells certificates, subscriptions, enterprise licences and online degrees from ~350+ university and industry partners, and in May 2026 it absorbed Udemy, its largest listed rival, in an all-stock merger.
At a glance
- Founded
- Launched April 2012, Mountain View, California, by two Stanford computer-science professors
- Founders
- Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller
- Headquarters
- Mountain View, California; large engineering and content operations in India, Canada and Europe
- Ownership / structure
- Public, NYSE: COUR (IPO March 31, 2021); Delaware public benefit corporation (converted February 2021) and certified B Corp; Udemy has been a wholly owned subsidiary since May 11, 2026
- Leadership (2026)
- Greg Hart, President and CEO (since February 2025; formerly at Amazon, where he led Alexa and Prime Video); Andrew Ng, Chairman (verify that he remains chair after the merger); former CEOs Jeff Maggioncalda (2017–2025) and Rick Levin (2014–2017)
- Segment and buyer
- Consumer (individual learners paying for certificates, Coursera Plus and degrees), Enterprise (employers, universities via Coursera for Campus, governments). Degrees were folded into the Consumer segment in 2025 reporting (verify)
- Scale
- ~168m registered learners at end-2024; ~190m+ in 2025 and ~200m+ after combining with Udemy's base (reported, verify); 2025 revenue $757m (+9%); 2026 standalone guidance $805–815m, issued before the Udemy deal closed
- Capital raised / valuation / market cap
- ~$440–460m of private venture capital (2012–2020; reported); last private valuation ~$2.5bn (Series F, July 2020); IPO raised ~$519m at $33/share (~$4.3bn valuation); peak market cap ~$7bn+ (2021); later traded mostly ~$1–2bn; combined Coursera-Udemy implied equity value ~$2.5bn at announcement (December 2025)
- Signature moves
- Free university MOOCs (2012); Signature Track paid certificates (2013); Specializations and the end of free certificates (2015–16); online degrees, starting with the Illinois iMBA (2015); Coursera for Business (2016); free COVID campus licences (2020); IPO as a public benefit corporation (2021); Coursera Coach and GenAI content (2023); Udemy merger (2025–26). Notable misses: low completion rates, stalled degree growth after 2022, and a post-IPO stock decline of ~75–85%
9 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2012
Founding and Free MOOCs
Launch
2013
Signature Track Paid Certificates
Pricing change / launch (first revenue product)
2015
Online Degrees iMBA
Launch / partnership (online degrees)
2015
Specializations and Paywall
Pricing change / product restructuring
2016
Coursera for Business
Launch (enterprise product)
2020
COVID Campus and Workforce Recovery
Launch / pricing change (free-to-paid conversion strategy)
2021
Public Benefit Corp IPO
IPO (preceded by conversion to a public benefit corporation)
2023
Coursera Coach GenAI
AI launch
2025
Udemy Merger
Acquisition (all-stock merger)