Source: online course provider Udemy is preparing to file for an IPO as soon as October, targeting a valuation of between $6B and $8B
Kate Clark / The Information : Tweets: @darian314 and @scobleizer Tweets: Darian Shirazi / @darian314 : Bet on amazing founders like @erenbali & @gaganbiyani and a decade later, the result is an $8B company: https://www.theinformation.com/ ... Scoble / @scobleizer : Education will be huge in the headset coming next year. @BrianRoemmele you buying? https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This leak lands mid-arc for Udemy: the company went from a $2B post-money round led by Benesse Holdings in February 2020 to a Series F filing at up to $3.32B that November, and an October filing would put it in front of public buyers barely a year later. The $6B–$8B target would be roughly double the last private mark.
The comparable everyone will trade against is Coursera, which priced at the top of its range in March for about $4.3B — same sector, same pandemic-era demand surge, listed months earlier. Whether public buyers pay up for a second course-marketplace depends heavily on how Coursera has traded since.
First-order effects
- Late-stage backers from the Series E and F rounds are underwriting a step-up from a $3.32B private mark to as much as $8B, while the eventual filing's disclosed financials — revenue up from $276.3M in 2019 to $429.9M in 2020, H1 2021 growth of 24.5% — set the actual pricing anchor.
- Founders Eren Bali and Gagan Biyani, plus early backers like Darian Shirazi's firm, see a decade-old bet reach liquidity if the October timeline holds.
Second-order effects
- Coursera's post-IPO trading becomes the live comp: if it trades below its $33 offer price, bankers will struggle to hold Udemy anywhere near the top of the leaked $6B–$8B range.
- A successful large listing reopens the window for other online-learning marketplaces weighing exits, forcing any that stayed private to justify why their growth deserves private rather than public multiples.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — leaked targets well above the last private round, followed by public pricing closer to it — growth-stage edtech positions face markdown pressure and mega-rounds in consumer learning marketplaces get harder to raise at step-up valuations.
- Pre-IPO leaks effectively become part of the book-building process, letting banks test demand through the press before committing to a filed range.
The trend: Education marketplaces are rushing to convert pandemic-era growth into public listings, but public markets are repricing them back toward — and sometimes below — their late-stage private valuations.