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Hitting Reset, Knewton Tries New Strategy: Competing With Textbook Publishers

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Knewton drew heaps of hype and investment by promising to provide artificial-intelligence technology to major textbook companies to make their content more adaptive. Kibby has big claims of his own, however, when it comes to how aggressively Knewton plans to compete with major textbook publishers.

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Knewton Was Acquired For Less Than $17M, and Former CEO Brian Kibby Has Left

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When Wiley announced back in May that it had acquired Knewton, both companies kept mum on how much the deal was worth. In its most recent earnings report , which covers the three months ended July 31, 2019, Wiley disclosed that it had “spent $73 million in total on acquisitions in the quarter, including zyBooks and Knewton.”

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Who is the Theranos of Education?

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Knewton: All Talk, Little Evidence While AltSchool spent millions of dollars, few experts I talked to described the microschool model as having negative impacts on student learning. But, don’t worry—they had plenty to say about Knewton. Life at a startup is hard, but education is exponentially harder.' No kidding.”

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Pearson, an Investor in Knewton, Is ‘Phasing Out’ Partnership on Adaptive Products

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Throughout the past decade, Knewton ’s adaptive learning technology has been backed by some of the biggest names in the both the publishing and venture capital community. Pearson will no longer use Knewton’s adaptive learning engine for some of its digital offerings.

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Amid Struggles, Knewton Names Former Pearson Exec as New CEO

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Knewton pioneered adaptive-learning technology and amassed more than $157 million in venture capital, but lately the company has weathered through the loss of publishing partners and the departure of its outspoken founder. I said, if it’s Knewton, I’m very interested, but if it’s not Knewton, I’m not.”

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Wiley to Acquire Knewton’s Assets, Marking an End to an Expensive Startup Journey

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In the second eye-raising deal for the higher-ed publishing industry in as many weeks, Wiley, a major textbook publisher, has agreed to acquire the assets of Knewton, a provider of digital courseware and adaptive-learning technologies. No industry analyst we spoke with believes the sale price was anywhere near what Knewton had raised.

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A Technologist Spent Years Building an AI Chatbot Tutor. He Decided It Can’t Be Done.

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In 2015, he famously criticized promises about what was then the latest in AI for education — a tool from a company called Knewton. The CEO of Knewton, Jose Ferreira, said his product would be “like a robot tutor in the sky that can semi-read your mind and figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are, down to the percentile.”

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