Education Technology · Profile from Education Technology Research Companion
Udemy, Inc.
The open online-course marketplace where anyone can publish a video course and set a price. Udemy built the largest catalogue of practical, instructor-made courses in the world, turned that catalogue into a corporate subscription (Udemy Business), listed on Nasdaq in 2021, struggled to make the model profitable or to grow it as a public company, and in May 2026 was absorbed by Coursera in an all-stock merger.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2010 (site launched May 2010); incorporated in Delaware, operating from Palo Alto and then San Francisco
- Founders
- Eren Bali, Oktay Caglar, Gagan Biyani
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California; large operations in Dublin, Ankara/Istanbul, Mexico City, Gurugram and Melbourne (reported)
- Ownership / structure
- Wholly owned subsidiary of Coursera, Inc. (NYSE: COUR) since May 11, 2026. Previously public on Nasdaq (UDMY), October 2021–May 2026
- Leadership (2026)
- Run inside Coursera under CEO Greg Hart (chair Andrew Ng). Last standalone CEO Hugo Sarrazin (March 2025–close) has since left to become CEO of Avalara (verify timing)
- Segment and buyer
- Workforce and consumer skills. Two buyers: individual learners (course purchases and the Personal Plan subscription) and employers (Udemy Business subscriptions); smaller government and university channels
- Scale
- ~70–80m+ registered learners and ~250k+ courses from ~75k+ instructors (company claims, 2024–25); ~16–17k Udemy Business customers (reported). FY2025 revenue $789.8m (FY2024 $786.6m); Udemy Business ARR $540.0m at end-2025
- Capital raised / valuation / market cap
- ~$300m+ of private capital (2010–2020); last private valuation ~$3.25bn (November 2020, Tencent-led); IPO October 2021 at $29/share, ~$4bn valuation, ~$421m raised; at the Coursera announcement (December 2025) Udemy's implied equity value was ~$1bn (41% of a ~$2.5bn combined equity value)
- Signature moves
- Open marketplace with instructor-set prices (2010); Udemy for Business (2014–15); price caps and the end of extreme discounting (2016); pandemic rounds from Benesse and Tencent (2020); IPO (2021); Personal Plan consumer subscription (2021–22); instructor subscription revenue-share cut (2023); restructuring and offshoring (2024); merger into Coursera (2025–26). Misses: post-IPO share-price collapse, piracy and plagiarism controversies, instructor revolt over payouts, stalled consumer revenue
9 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2010
Founding and Open Marketplace
Launch
2015
Udemy for Business Launch
Launch (B2B pivot within a consumer company)
2016
Pricing Caps and Discount Reset
Pricing change
2020
Pandemic Rounds Benesse Tencent
Funding round (strategic investors)
2021
IPO
IPO
2022
Personal Plan Consumer Subscription
Pricing change / business-model change
2023
Instructor Revenue Share Cut
Pricing change (supply side)
2024
Restructuring and Offshoring
Restructuring
2025
Coursera Merger
Acquisition (Udemy as target; all-stock merger)