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Class Technologies Inc.
Chasen co-founded Class alongside CTO Wesley Boyer in September 2020, after selling Blackboard for $1.64 billion (per Providence Equity deal, 2011) and a stint...
Class Technologies Inc.
Chasen co-founded Class alongside CTO Wesley Boyer in September 2020, after selling Blackboard for $1.64 billion (per Providence Equity deal, 2011) and a stint running PrecisionHawk's drone-analytics business. The company set out to solve a specific problem: Zoom was built for meetings, not teaching. Class adds attendance tracking, test proctoring, one-to-one student breakout discussions, and integrated gradebooks directly into the Zoom client. The firm sells a SaaS platform to higher-education institutions, K–12 school districts, and corporate L&D departments. Its product suite layers instructional tools—interactive whiteboards, quizzing, seating charts, hand-raise queues—on top of Zoom's video backbone. Deployment is predominantly in North America, with a growing footprint across EMEA and APAC through reseller partnerships. Class landed on the Inc. 5000 list in 2024, reflecting sustained revenue growth since its launch. The company raised $105 million in a SoftBank Vision Fund 2-led Series B in 2021, with participation from earlier backers including Insight Partners, Owl Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures (per the firm, July 2021). Total disclosed venture funding exceeds $190 million. It acquired Blackboard Collaborate from Anthology in 2023, reuniting Chasen with the virtual-classroom product he originally built, and integrated it into a unified platform. Professional headcount is not publicly disclosed, though the firm operates across the United States with offices in New York and Washington, DC. Class's structural differentiator is its Zoom-first architecture. Rather than building yet another standalone video platform, it created a category by embedding instructional software inside the tool that corporate and academic IT departments had already deployed at scale during the pandemic—making procurement a lightweight add-on rather than a rip-and-replace decision.
General information
Firm type
EdTech
Year founded
2020
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
New York
Corporate office
New York, NY, United States
Additional offices
Washington, DC
Principals
Michael Chasen
Co-Founder & CEO
Wesley Boyer
Co-Founder & CTO
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
How does Class Technologies add value on top of Zoom?
Class is not a standalone video platform—it runs as a layer inside the Zoom client. It adds tools purpose-built for instruction: attendance automation, proctoring, hand-raise queues, breakout rooms with instructional supervision, integrated gradebooks, and real-time quizzing. The architecture means institutions already licensed for Zoom can deploy Class without replacing their core video infrastructure.
What is Michael Chasen's background and why is it relevant?
Chasen co-founded Blackboard in 1997 and served as its CEO through its 2004 IPO and its 2011 $1.64 billion take-private sale to Providence Equity Partners. He later ran PrecisionHawk, a commercial drone-analytics company. His Blackboard experience gives Class deep institutional knowledge of how schools and universities evaluate, purchase, and deploy instructional technology—relationships and distribution channels that a de novo competitor would lack.
Who are Class's primary investors?
SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led a $105 million Series B in July 2021. The cap table also includes Insight Partners, Owl Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and Emergence Capital (per the firm, 2021). Total disclosed venture funding stands at over $190 million.
How does the Blackboard Collaborate acquisition change Class's competitive position?
In 2023, Class acquired Blackboard Collaborate from Anthology. The deal brought the original virtual-classroom product Chasen built at Blackboard back under his control, along with its installed base of higher-education clients. It allowed Class to consolidate two overlapping synchronous-learning products and offer migration paths for legacy Collaborate customers.
Does Class sell only to universities, or does it target corporate training as well?
Class sells to a mix of higher-education institutions, K–12 school districts, and corporate learning-and-development departments. The platform's feature set—proctoring, compliance reporting, instructor dashboards—serves both academic credit-bearing courses and regulated corporate training environments equally.
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