Scribbr co-founders Bas Swaen and Koen Driessen | Image credit: Scribbr
US-based Course Hero, an online learning platform, announced that it has acquired Amsterdam-based Scribbr, an edutech platform that aims to help students graduate. Scribbr provides multilingual proofreading, editing and citation service for academic writing.
Course Hero reports this as its first acquisition since its $395M Series C, the funding that has helped the company expand its geographic reach and writing offerings.
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How does Scribbr help students graduate?
Founded in 2012 by two Dutch students, Bas Swaen and Koen Driessen, Scribbr was born out of Driessen’s need for an English-speaking proofreader for his thesis. Swaen realised that he was very fortunate to have had academic support at home that others did not have access to and the pair set out to help anyone become a better academic writer.
In the last ten years, the Dutch company has grown from a proofreading and editing only service with one editor to a network of more than 700 editors globally, supporting multiple languages and academic offerings, including grammar edits, language notes and clarity checks.
The platform has also expanded to offer a plagiarism checker and citation tools, including a citation generator and a citation checker, to ensure the citations listed are accurately formatted and free of stylistic errors and inconsistencies.
Aim of this acquisition
With this acquisition, Course Hero will be able to expand its international reach and support the complete writing journey for students by adding Scribbr’s high-touch services to the company’s AI-powered writing platform, QuillBot.
Scribbr’s network of 700+ expert editors will complement QuillBot, which is more of an AI-based tool. Scribbr’s international network supports 10 European languages.
Andrew Grauer, co-founder and CEO of Course Hero, says, “Scribbr joining Course Hero, accelerates our vision of helping learners of all backgrounds succeed in the classroom. We are expanding our suite of writing solutions and building on QuillBot’s unique AI technology to offer high-quality expertise and a powerful knowledge base that’s trusted by students and educators alike.”
About Course Hero
Founded in 2006, Course Hero is an online learning platform with study resources that help students learn more deeply, effectively and affordably throughout the arc of their career.
The company’s portfolio includes Course Hero, an online learning platform of academic resources; CliffsNotes, the study guide company; LitCharts, a creator of literature resources; QuillBot, an AI-powered platform helping people improve their writing skills; and Symbolab, a pioneering developer of AI for Mathematics Education.
Since 2020, Course Hero has grown its portfolio to target new subject areas, grade levels and countries with the acquisitions of CliffsNotes, LitCharts, QuillBot, and Symbolab.
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