Coursera grew out of a single Stanford class on machine learning that Andrew Ng put online in 2011. Ng and fellow professor Daphne Koller turned the idea into a company that brought university courses to anyone with an internet connection. By the end of 2020 it had 77 million registered learners and more than 150 university partners. It went public in March 2021, a year into a pandemic that had pushed school online.

Two Professors, One Platform

Ng and Koller founded Coursera in 2011 and launched its first open online course in 2012. Universities supplied the teaching, and Coursera supplied the platform. Most courses were free to watch. Coursera made money from certificates, then from degree programs, and from 2016 from an Enterprise product that let companies train their staff. The bet was that a credential from a famous school would be worth paying for, even when the lectures were free.

Thirty-Three Dollars and Udemy

Coursera priced its IPO at $33 a share in March 2021 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as COUR. It went public as a public benefit corporation, with its education mission written into its charter. In December 2025 Coursera agreed to combine with its rival Udemy. The all-stock deal closed in May 2026, and Coursera still trades on the NYSE.

Cover: Old Man with a Boy Reading, Jean Jacques de Boissieu. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for an old man teaching a boy to read (learning).