Class, a virtual classroom that integrates exclusively with Zoom, raises $105M led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 at a $804M post-money valuation
Class, a virtual classroom that integrates exclusively with Zoom, announced today that it has raised $105 million in a financing led by SoftBank Vision Fund II.
Context & Ripple Effects
Class has been raising on a steep curve since its $16M seed round, which included Zoom board member Santi Subotovsky, followed by a $30M Series A in February 2021. The $105M SoftBank-led round takes it to roughly $151M total raised in under a year, at an $804M post-money valuation — all for a product that exists only inside Zoom.
First-order effects
- SoftBank Vision Fund II is writing its largest check into K-12-facing classroom software, giving Class the capital to build out features and sales while remaining structurally dependent on Zoom's platform decisions.
- The $804M valuation prices Class as a category leader among Zoom-native education tools, ahead of where its own Series A had placed it just five months earlier.
Second-order effects
- Class is raising alongside a broader edtech funding wave — Outschool's $110M Series D at a $3B valuation and ClassDojo's $125M raise show investors competing to back school-market software, pushing up valuations across the segment.
- Zoom gains leverage from exclusive integrations like Class's: every tool that locks to one conferencing stack raises the switching costs for schools and deepens the moat around whichever platform hosts them.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, virtual-classroom software consolidates into two camps — products native to a dominant video platform versus standalone marketplaces like Outschool — and platform owners become gatekeepers deciding which classroom layers get distribution.
- Heavy late-stage checks into single-platform dependencies set up a structural test: when pandemic-era remote learning normalizes, valuations tied exclusively to one host platform will be repriced against schools returning to physical classrooms.
The trend: Edtech venture capital is concentrating on software built directly atop dominant video-conferencing platforms, with fund-size investors like SoftBank accelerating the pace.