Education Technology · Profile from Education Technology Research Companion
Quizizz Inc. (Wayground since 2025)
The India-born, US-headquartered classroom quiz platform that beat Kahoot! at its own game in many American classrooms by making quizzes student-paced, playable as homework and full of memes. It grew to claimed use in a majority of US schools on a free model, turned profitable with paid teacher, school and district plans, raised ~$44m in two quick 2021 rounds led by Eight Roads and Tiger Global, added AI creation tools in 2023, and in June 2025 rebranded as Wayground, a "supplemental curriculum" platform.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2015, Bengaluru, India
- Founders
- Ankit Gupta (CEO) and Deepak Joy Cheenath (co-founder, product and engineering)
- Headquarters
- Santa Clara, California (US entity Quizizz Inc., now Wayground); main engineering and operations in Bengaluru
- Ownership / structure
- Private, venture-backed; investors include Eight Roads Ventures, Tiger Global, GSV Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners and Jerry Yang (AME Cloud Ventures)
- Leadership (2026)
- Ankit Gupta, co-founder and CEO (verify); Deepak Joy Cheenath, co-founder
- Segment and buyer
- US K-12 primarily (teachers, schools and districts); also international schools, higher education and some workplace use
- Scale
- Company claims: used in ~65%+ of US schools (2021) and ~90% of US schools (2025, Wayground site); "tens of millions" of monthly users (~; not audited). Revenue not disclosed; company said it was profitable in 2021; secondary aggregators cite revenue in the low tens of millions USD (unverified)
- Capital raised / valuation
- Seed/early funding from Nexus and angels (~2016–19, amount not confirmed); Series A $12.5m (March 2021, led by Eight Roads); Series B $31.5m (June 2021, led by Tiger Global), total ~$47m at that point; valuation ~$300m reported (unconfirmed). Later funding (~$16m, 2024) listed by PitchBook (verify); total sometimes cited ~$64m
- Signature moves
- Student-paced quiz game (2015); free, meme-driven teacher virality; remote-learning surge and Lessons (2020); paid Super and school/district plans (2020–21); back-to-back Series A and B (2021); district platform and standards-aligned library (2022–24); Quizizz AI (2023); rebrand to Wayground (June 2025). Misses/risks: brand confusion after rebrand, heavy dependence on US K-12 budgets, competition from Blooket, Gimkit and Kahoot!
7 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2015
Founding Student Paced Quizzes
Launch (free, student-paced gamified quizzes)
2020
Paid Super and School Plans
Pricing change (first paid subscriptions on top of a free product)
2020
Remote Learning Surge and Lessons
Launch / product expansion (from quiz tool to lesson-delivery tool)
2021
Series A and Series B
Funding round (Series A and Series B within ~3 months)
2022
District Platform and Supplemental Library
Pivot (from teacher freemium to district-level platform and curated supplemental content)
2023
Quizizz AI Launch
AI launch (generative AI for creation, adaptation and accommodations)
2025
Rebrand to Wayground
Rebrand / repositioning (from quiz tool to AI-supported supplemental curriculum platform)