The long-awaited filing finally happened. This morning, Pluralsight announced it had confidentially submitted paperwork for an initial public offering.
The Farmington, Utah-based provider of online courses for technology professionals has been on the radars of industry analysts ever since its $135 million Series B fundraise in 2014. It raised an additional $30 million in 2016 at a $1 billion valuation—thus earning the “unicorn” label. (That year, it also added former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan onto its board of directors.) The company has raised more than $200 million in venture capital from investors including Insight Venture Partners and ICONIQ Capital.
Founded in 2004, Pluralsight currently offers more than 6,000 online courses on a variety of technical, business and design skills—from architecture to manufacturing, game development and software engineering. The platform features videos from more than 1,300 authors who are paid based on how often their videos are viewed each month. The company claims its most popular teachers can make millions of dollars through this model.
On its website Pluralsight says it serves more than a million learners and 9,500 companies across more than 150 countries, which pay a subscription to access the content. With more than 800 employees, Pluralsight plans to add as many as 2,400 more over the next decade, reports Deseret News. It recently broke ground on a new U.S. headquarter and set up an office in Dublin, Ireland as the base for its efforts to expand into Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Pluralsight’s listing would mark the first IPO for the U.S. edtech industry since Instructure, another Utah-based company, went public in November 2015.
