Instructure

Instructure was founded in 2008 by two BYU graduate students, Brian Whitmer and Devlin Daley,[4] with initial funding from Mozy founder Josh Coates (currently the CEO) and Epic Ventures.[5] In December 2010, the Utah Education Network (UEN), which represents a number of Utah colleges and universities, announced that Instructure would be replacing Blackboard as their preferred LMS.[6] By January, 2013, Instructure's LMS platform was in use by more than 300 colleges, universities and K-12 districts, and the company's customer base had increased to more than 425 halfway through 2013 and 9 million users by the end of 2013.[7][8] In February 2011, Instructure announced that they were making their flagship product, Canvas, freely available under an AGPL license as open source software. Instructure's announcement received coverage in the press.[9][10][11][12] In February 2012, the company launched Canvas K-12.[13] In November 2012, Instructure entered the massive open online course market by launching Canvas Network.[14] In June 2013, Instructure secured $30 Million in Series D Funding, bringing their lifetime funding total to $50M.[15] In February, 2015, Instructure raised another $40 Million in Series E Funding, raising their lifetime funding total to $90M. CEO Josh Coates described it as "a pre-IPO round."[16] On November 13, 2015, Instructure began trading as a publicly held company on the New York Stock Exchange.[17]