This Week in Edtech with Ben Kornell, 1/14/22 with Guest Natalia Kucirkova

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Welcome back to our Weekly Round-up of Edtech news across the industry!

Guest: Natalia Kucirkova of Wikit, AS

Our top stories this week:

1) Companies Becoming Platforms through Consolidation
- HMH acquires school testing non-profit NWEA
- Instructure (maker of the Canvas LMS) acquires evidence platform Learnplatform
- Zoom launches 'Essential Apps' including Kahoot! and Prezi
- Jack McDermott of Chegg on consolidation in Edtech 

2) Edtech Winter creating CEO turnover
- Upgrad CEO Arjun Mohan resigns
- Newsela CEO Matthew Gross leaves, Pep Carrera from Nearpod takes helm
- Udemy CEO and Board Chair retires, is replaced by Head of Udemy Business
- Inspera changes CEO

3) Seattle schools suing big tech
- Seattle schools are suing TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube for causing mental health crises

4) Student Financial Aid Startup Frank Being Sued by J.P. Morgan Chase
- JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon and co are now suing the company, alleging that Frank invented 4+ million fake users to close the sale.
 -  Ben: "the FTX of Edtech."

5) Edtech Conference Season is Underway
- GSV announces its "GSV 150" and the "Elite 200"
- SxSWEdu announces its launch contest participants

Funding Rounds

• LEAD School becomes Unicorn, acquires Pearson's K-12 Business in India
• Toddle raises $17 million
• Eduvanz raises $12.6M