RHINELAND'S A FINE LAND: Udacity has begun operations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland—quickly becoming its fastest growing regions—according to an email to Edsurge. The Silicon Valley-based company, now worth more than $1 billion, offers short professional development courses, dubbed "nanodegrees," on technical topics such as data analytics and software development.
In the email, Udacity representatives said that the company sees many of its German-speaking users coming from the automotive and banking sectors. The education arm of the German publisher Bertelsmann, Udacity's biggest shareholder, is assisting with its deployment across the new regions.
Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun told Reuters than he plans for the company to expand beyond technical fields like information technology, though those areas currently form the core of Udacity's business. "At the moment we are active in a niche market," Thrun said, "But we plan to expand."
