Newsela curates a range of third-party content—primary source documents, news and magazine pieces like National Geographic—into K-12 instructional materials intended to replace textbooks and provide more engaging, personalized lessons. Its product bundles content with analytics to help teachers track and boost student engagement, a capability that grew in importance during remote learning. The paid product is priced between $6 and $14 per student, contrasted with textbook costs of $20 to $40 per student. Newsela estimates gross bookings grew 115% over the pandemic and revenue grew 81%; the company declined to disclose exact revenue figures or whether it is profitable. By the end of 2021 the platform expected more than 11 million students using Newsela licensing, and estimates two-thirds of U.S. public schools use the platform. The company offered its product for free early in the pandemic, which drove a healthy bump in users, and plans to use new funding to expand distribution into more classrooms. Newsela offers a platform that aggregates licensed third‑party content from over 100 sources, republishes it on its site, and rewrites material into five reading levels to make texts adaptive for classrooms. It primarily serves K‑12 users across subjects including social studies, science, English, and some math, and also supports ESL and adult education. The company reports more than 20 million students and 1.8 million teachers using the platform, with usage in roughly 90% of U.S. schools. Newsela provides a free tier plus two paid tiers for teachers and for schools/districts offering additional analytics, admin tools, training, and support. The startup works with teachers and districts to build customized collections on request and aims to expand subject coverage and deeper penetration in existing accounts. Newsela says it is capital‑efficient, has grown staff 50% in the last year, and expects similar growth, positioning itself for further product expansion and potential M&A. Newsela publishes daily news articles from media sources at five reading levels to engage students in grades 2–12. It sources content from outlets such as the Associated Press, Washington Post, Tribune News Service and Scientific American. Students read articles and take Common Core-aligned quizzes online to build nonfiction literacy skills. Led by founder and CEO Matthew Gross, the platform reports more than 400,000 teachers who have assigned over 57 million articles. The company plans to use new funding to accelerate its machine learning capabilities and expand its presence. Launched in 2013 by CEO Matthew Gross, Newsela publishes daily news articles at five reading levels to engage students in grades 3–12 across topics such as immigration, diplomacy, drones and animal extinction. The platform provides teachers with tools to instruct reading across a range of abilities and subject areas. Since launch, Newsela articles have been read more than 5 million times by students from more than 80 countries. The company intends to use its new funding to expand content coverage into areas such as sports and science, produce curriculum materials for teachers and schools, and add features for richer feedback to students. Newsela also plans to analyze students’ and teachers’ use of the platform to develop more effective learning tools. Financially, Newsela raised $4.1M in a Series A to support these product and content expansions. Newsela is an NYC-based online platform that publishes daily news articles from top news sources rewritten at five different reading levels for grades 3 through 12. The platform adapts content to each student’s reading ability and interests so learners receive appropriately challenging material. Articles are paired with quizzes aligned to the Common Core State Standards so teachers can track students’ progress daily. Teachers receive customized insights and recommended actions to improve specific students’ reading comprehension. The company plans to use the $1.2M seed funding to expand its offering of daily articles at multiple reading levels and Common Core-aligned quizzes. Newsela Beta is available for free, the company is hiring, and it is led by founder and CEO Matthew Gross.

Total raised

$170M

Funding rounds

5

Latest round

Series D

Latest activity

Feb 2021