Coursera Inc

Our mission is to provide universal access to world-class learning so that anyone, anywhere has the power to transform their life through learning.

Learning is the source of human progress. The spread of ideas across cultures and ages has helped transform our world from illness to health, from poverty to prosperity, and from conflict to peace. By combining some of the world’s best educational content with a technology platform that can serve learners on a global scale, we believe Coursera is enabling the digital transformation of higher education and bringing high-quality, affordable education to every corner of the world.

Coursera is a platform that enables a global ecosystem of educators, learners, and institutions. As of December 31, 2023, approximately 142 million learners from more than 235 countries and dependencies had registered on Coursera to learn from more than 325 universities and industry experts. Our educator partners have created a broad catalog of content and credentials, ranging from entry-level industry microcred entials to university degrees, which are globally distributed through our platform’s multiple segments. Coursera serves learners with educational content directly in their homes or on the go, on the job through their employers, their colleges and universities, and through government-sponsored programs. As of December 31, 2023, over 1,300 institutions were paying Enterprise customers, including businesses, colleges, universities, and governmental organizations. We also provide social impact programs that have helped more than 260,000 learners around the world.

The graphic below illustrates our global learning ecosystem as of December 31, 2023:

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Technology is advancing faster than the world’s ability to adapt and acquire new skills. We believe that recent advancements in artificial intelligence (“AI”) and other emerging technologies will reshape how we live, learn, and work. We expect this will further increase the global skills gap. The rapid adoption of new technologies, tools, and processes creates an urgent need for organizations and learners to adapt in order to remain competitive. To gain from the opportunities created by the digital economy, many aspiring and existing professionals need advanced skills in technology, AI, and data science. We believe education will continue to be further characterized by blended classrooms powered by online learning, job-relevant education, and lifelong learning to help employees, students, and citizens learn emerging skills that can be used in their current jobs, to obtain new job opportunities, or to run their businesses.

Our vision for the future of higher education emphasizes accessibility, affordability, and relevance, ensuring it meets the demands and pace of a rapidly changing economy. We believe that online learning will become the primary means of meeting the global demand for emerging skills and that the adoption of online education, combined with the increased flexibility enabled by larger remote and hybrid workforces, holds the promise to increase global social equity. Cross-sector collaboration will be required between universities, employers, and government organizations in order to bridge the gap between education and industry needs.

World-class teaching is the foundation of the Coursera experience. Coursera partners with over 325 university and industry partners to provide learners with high-quality content and credentials that are modular and consumable at a wide range of durations, skill levels, and price points. Our data-driven technology platform enables educators to efficiently produce, teach, and scale content and credentials, from individual courses to professional certificates to university degrees. Coursera enables educator partners to tap into global demand from individual learners, organizations, and institutions.

Reaching and serving a world of learners lies at the heart of our model. We make it easy for learners to discover and engage with high-quality, job-relevant learning in flexible, hands-on online learning environments at affordable prices—including free offerings. Content from top-branded partners has enabled us to attract approximately 142 million individual learners at low cost and build a global consumer brand. Data-driven marketing enables us to efficiently attract learners to a wide range of paid offerings, including standalone courses, multi-course specializations, industry certificate programs, and university degrees. We believe this efficient learner acquisition model has allowed us to build one of the largest global audiences of adult learners globally and serve learners at various price points, with competitive margins for us and our educator partners.

We expect the long, episodic nature of higher education will break down into shorter, more relevant units of consumption designed to increase affordability and provide more immediate access to workforce participation. Our model allows learners to leverage flexible and affordable pathways across our catalog, including the ability to“stack”content and credentials to count as progress towards a broader program of study. This is enabled by qualifying our high-quality learning catalog for credit recognition through partners like the American Council on Education (“ACE”) and the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (“ECTS”). For example, eligible learners who complete the Google Data Analytics Certificate can earn a credit recommendation of 12 college credits, the equivalent of four college courses at the bachelor’s degree level in participating programs.

Coursera’s data and machine-learning systems drive personalized learning and skills benchmarking. We believe that our unified technology platform is not only making global higher education more accessible and more effective but is also enabling educators to author and distribute high-quality content efficiently, employers to upskill and reskill their talent, and learners to advance their careers in a flexible learning environment. Further, our platform allows employers to tap into a diverse talent pool and provides them with insight into which learners have the requisite skills for specific job roles. It also allows learners to develop and showcase their skills with industry microcredentials and hands-on projects. For example, we announced approximately 20 new entry-level Professional Certificates over the past year from partners like Amazon Web Services (“AWS”), Google, IBM, Microsoft, and more.

In addition to offering content and credentials directly to individuals at Coursera.org, we also sell directly to organizations and institutions, including employers, colleges and universities, and government entities and agencies. Employers can use Coursera for Business to help employees develop new skills in order to better acquire and serve customers, lower costs, reduce risk, and remain competitive in the new digital economy. Colleges and universities can use Coursera for Campus to deliver and integrate university and industry-branded online projects, courses, and credentials as they navigate a new era of financial challenges, pressure to deliver job-relevant skills and employable graduates, and evolving student preferences for hybrid learning. Government entities and agencies can use Coursera for Government to train, reskill, and upskill employees and citizens into fast-growing digital roles that constitute a significant share of new job opportunities.

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The global higher education market is large and growing. As we seek to reinforce our platform’s advantages and continue penetrating this market opportunity, we have multiple strategies to drive our growth. This includes improving conversion, upsell, and retention of paid consumer learners, particularly our global expansion; increasing adoption and penetration of our Enterprise offerings; expanding the number of online degrees and the number of students in Degrees programs; and deploying new technologies to deliver more value for our individual and institutional customers.

Our Opportunity: The Global Education Market is Large and Growing

As the pace of new knowledge and the demands of the global workforce continue to accelerate, we believe the global adult education market is poised to grow dramatically, through advancements in technology, flexibility, and accessibility. For example, the flexibility of online learning enables non-traditional learners to continue their education, while remote instruction and asynchronous delivery can broaden access to affordable, high-quality education for learners and institutions around the world.

Our Offerings to Individuals, Organizations, and Institutions

Coursera.org for Individuals

Most learners come to Coursera to start and advance their careers, reach their educational goals, and enhance their lives. Learners consume content from our diversified portfolio, which is designed to meet a wide variety of goals and preferences. Our educator partners create thousands of courses, credentials, and other offerings across a wide range of domains, from a 2-hour Guided Project on how to build a website, to an entry-level Professional Certificate, to a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Michigan.

As technology automates more repetitive, predictable, lower-skilled job tasks, individuals around the world are looking to reskill with professional certificates and college degrees in order to move into emerging digital careers. Coursera offers a portfolio of entry-level Professional Certificates from Google, IBM, Intuit, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce that help develop the skills needed to land entry-level digital jobs in information technology, cybersecurity, data science, marketing, sales, design, and software engineering and development without requiring a college degree or any experience in the field. Coursera also has fully online degrees in data science, computer science, engineering, business, AI, social science, and public health.

The full Coursera catalog includes*:

•3,500+ Guided Projects: Gain a job-relevant skill in less than two hours for $9.99

•6,900+ Courses: Learn something new in 4 to 6 weeks for free, or for prices up to $99

•875+ Specializations: Gain a job-relevant skill in 3 to 6 months for $39 to $79 per month

•125+ Certificates

◦45+ Entry-level Professional Certificates: Earn a certification of job readiness for an in-demand career in 3 to 9 months for $39 to $79 per month

◦30 Non-entry level Professional Certificates: Earn a certification to advance your career in 1 to 10 months starting at $49 per month

◦30 University Certificates: Earn a university-issued certificate to develop expertise in a chosen field in 4 to 24 months for approximately $1,500 to $10,000

◦15+ MasterTrack Certificates: In 3 to 12 months, earn a university-issued certificate from a module of a university degree and credit that can be applied to that degree in the future for approximately $2,000

•50+ Degrees: Earn a bachelor’s or master’s degree fully online for approximately $5,000 to $45,000 or earn a postgraduate diploma

• As of December 31, 2023. The time periods noted are intended completion timeframes; actual time to completion varies by learner. Learners may also access certain courses, Specializations, and Professional Certificates through a Coursera Plus subscription. Prices reflect rounded ranges applicable to nearly all content and credentials; a small percentage may exceed the top and bottom ends of the range.

Our platform enables learners to discover the right content and credentials by domain (e.g., business, technology, health), by skill (e.g., Python, statistics, data visualization), and by job role (e.g., data analyst, marketer, engineer). Once learners enroll in a course, our unified technology platform enables them to learn more effectively to advance in their careers and earn credentials to signal their learning to prospective employers.

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The learning experience includes:

•Courses with video-based lectures, in-video quizzes, notes and highlights, readings, assessments, peer reviews, and group projects;

•AI-driven learning features, such as Coursera Coach for pre-quiz practice questions and a more interactive experience, personalized discovery and recommendations that are job-aligned, and foreign language translations for up to 18 languages;

•Coursera Labs with hands-on projects that teach practical skills using real-world tools such as Python, Jupyter Notebooks, VS Code, R-Studio, and many other desktop and cloud-based applications fully in-browser with no software or data downloads;

•A mobile app that enables course downloads for offline learning, which is especially important for students with limited or intermittent internet connectivity or power; and

•Localized experiences including localized homepage, payment options, geographical pricing, local partnerships, and content discovery.

As of December 31, 2023, approximately 142 million learners had registered with Coursera to learn from more than 325 leading university and industry partners in thousands of offerings ranging from open courses to university degrees.

•In 2023, learners logged more than 45 million course enrollments, watched 532 million lectures, and completed 89 million assessments.

•Learners have logged more than 10.3 million Guided Project enrollments since we launched Guided Projects in 2020.

•Our growing Professional Certificate catalog has enrolled more than 11.8 million learners since we launched this catalog in 2018.

•Over 22,000 students were enrolled in Degrees programs as of December 31, 2023.

Overall, learners are satisfied with their experiences on Coursera and with the outcomes Coursera learning helps them achieve. Of learners who have rated a course in 2023, 82% gave their course a full 5-star rating.

Coursera Plusis a subscription pricing model that gives learners access to over 10,000 courses, Guided Projects, Specializations, and Professional Certificates on Coursera for a monthly or annual fee.

Coursera for Enterprise

Coursera is available to organizations and institutions around the world, allowing businesses, academic institutions, and governmental organizations to enable their employees, students, and citizens to gain critical skills aligned to the job market of today and tomorrow. Institutions play a major role in tackling the global reskilling challenge by providing awareness, incentives, and financial support for lifelong learning.

Coursera has designed a single, unified platform that allows us to configure a common set of content and features to meet the various needs of our Enterprise customers that we manage through our Coursera for Business, Coursera for Campus, and Coursera for Government verticals. We have more than 1,300 Paid Enterprise Customers that purchase Coursera through our direct sales force. We also have customers that purchase licenses through our channel partners or directly through our Coursera for Teams offering.

The common content and features on Coursera’s Enterprise learning platform include:

•A broad catalog of more than 6,500 courses, hands-on projects, and professional certificates, especially in the domains of data science, technology, and business;

•Private Authoring, the ability for all Enterprise customers to author courses and projects that are specific to and accessible only by the learners in their institution or their citizens, as applicable;

•The ability to tailor custom course collections that surface curated collections of courses to specific learner populations;

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•Academies and SkillSets that identify target skill proficiencies required for specific job roles and provide personalized learning paths to develop these skill proficiencies;

•Coursera Labs, with hands-on projects that teach practical skills using real-world tools such as Python, Jupyter Notebooks, VS Code, R-Studio, and many other desktop or cloud-based applications fully in-browser with no software or data downloads;

•Dashboards that enable administrators to deliver tailored learning programs to specific learner groups, measure and track progress in skills development, and benchmark learner skill proficiency;

•LevelSets that help learners calibrate targeted content recommendations to their skill level so they can reach learning goals faster;

•Career Academy that leverages our entry-level Professional Certificates and Guided Projects to deliver the skills and credentials that can prepare learners for in-demand, digital jobs, even those with no college degree or prior work experience and

•Generative AI Academy, a new Enterprise offering designed to equip executives and their employees with the foundational literacy and skills from top research universities and companies at the forefront of AI.

Coursera for Business helps employers upskill and reskill their teams in order to better acquire and serve customers, lower costs, and reduce risk, as well as to drive innovation, competitiveness, and growth. Employers can also use Coursera for Business to help attract and retain talent in a competitive labor market as employers are increasingly positioning learning programs as a career development benefit. Our content in data science, technology, and business is especially relevant to employers; Private Authoring allows businesses to create courses and projects using their own datasets and tools; SkillSets, Academies, and LevelSets can be tailored to company-specific job-roles and skill requirements; Coursera Labs helps employers provide hands-on training using the tools that are deployed in their corporate environments; and Dashboards allow businesses to benchmark skill proficiency against specific industry and competitive peer groups. In 2023, Coursera for Business learners logged over 4.8 million course enrollments. Over 65% of Coursera’s direct sales customers in this vertical are outside of the U.S.

Coursera for Campus empowers academic institutions to offer job-relevant, credit-ready, high-quality online education to students, faculty, and staff. Colleges and universities can use Coursera for Campus to deliver university-branded, online learning in a new era of financial challenges for higher education and evolving student preferences for hybrid learning. Over the past few years, thousands of higher education institutions launched Coursera for Campus, with growth accelerated by free initiatives during the pandemic. This has made it one of our fastest-growing offerings. We launched Career Academy in 2022, which offers industry microcredentials alongside the core university curriculum to attract students and produce graduates with the skills and abilities that employers seek. Our high-quality content from leading universities, relevant job training from industry experts, and academic integrity features are especially relevant to colleges that allow students to earn credit towards their university degree by taking online courses; Private Authoring allows faculty to create courses and projects that meet their particular curricular needs; SkillSets and LevelSets help faculty and students understand what skills will improve the chance of getting hired into particular job roles after graduation; Coursera Labs enables schools to supplement conceptual study with hands-on learning in a scalable cloud environment; and Dashboards help faculty and career placement personnel enhance student employability by benchmarking student skill proficiency against specific industry job roles. More recently, growth in our catalog of entry-level Professional Certificates, in combination with regional credit recommendations, has enabled universities and colleges to offer career electives to students for credit. For example, our expanded partnership with the University of Texas System allows students, faculty, staff, and alumni to access industry microcredentials in Career Academy across nine campuses.

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Coursera for Government partners with national and local governmental organizations to deliver workforce reskilling programs for in-demand jobs. We also work with governmental organizations to develop and empower the next generation of public sector leaders through skill development programs. Our Professional Certificates and content from leading universities and industry partners are especially relevant to government officials who seek to prepare citizens for emerging jobs in their region and enhance the skills of public sector employees; Private Authoring allows agencies to create localized hands-on projects using regional instructors to develop skills to meet regional employment opportunities; LevelSets help learners assess their skill level and find the right content for their needs; Guided Projects enable governments to provide citizens and employees with hands-on training for the latest digital tools; and Skills Dashboards help workforce development personnel measure skill development and benchmark skill proficiency against workforces in other countries. Workforce development programs include Professional Certificates tailored for entry-level positions. These programs are designed for individuals without a college degree or prior work experience. They provide opportunities for exploring various careers, developing essential skills and competencies, and building a hands-on project portfolio using actual workplace tools. Additionally, participants have the chance to earn industry-recognized credentials.

Our Competitive Strengths: The Power of Our Business Model

We believe that our competitive advantage is based on the following key strengths:

Trusted brand with a large learner base. With approximately 142 million registered learners, we have one of the largest global audiences of adult learners in the world. This large, growing learner base attracts top educator partners, creates Enterprise and Degrees leads, provides data and insights, increases operating scale, improves search engine optimization performance, and produces favorable economics.

Our consumer flywheel creates a price-to-cost advantage. We make it easy for learners to come to Coursera and explore learning options through free open courses and projects. We believe this efficient acquisition model, powered by free, high-quality content, global partner brands, deep expertise in search engine optimization, strong word-of-mouth referrals, public relations, and effective paid marketing, enables us to attract learners to Coursera at scale and connect them with the right learning experiences over the course of their academic and professional lives.

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Branded catalog of modular content and credentials. Our broad catalog and flexible technology platform provide many entry points for learners and allow us to give learners a path to achieving their goals, regardless of their starting place. This allows us to help learners find the right learning program based on their prior skills, credentials, experience, and career desires and provide pathways for them to accomplish their goals. For example, a learner with no college degree or experience might start their learning journey with the Google IT Support Professional Certificate over three to six months, land a new IT job, and get academic credit towards the University of London Bachelor’s of Computer Science, which they can complete while working, lowering the opportunity cost of earning that degree. We believe we are the only platform with the ability to blend industry microcredentials with traditional academic degree credentials at scale. Many of our credentials have ACE and ECTS credit recommendations, which makes it easier for learners to earn academic credit towards a local or online degree program.

Network of leading academic and industry partners. Our large and global learner base attracts top-tier educator partners by allowing them to reach new audiences and create new revenue streams with relatively small up-front investments. We carefully select our university and industry partners, prioritizing quality, subject expertise, and geographic appeal. As technology advances and new relevant skill sets emerge, our growing partner relationships enable us to be responsive in providing in-demand skills for aspiring and ascending professionals.

Job-relevant, hands-on projects, and industry certificates. In order to compete and keep pace with the rapidly changing skills landscape, learners need to be able to quickly identify and learn practical skills using job-relevant tools. Our Project Network is composed of instructors who have demonstrated expertise in a tool or skill through industry experience or academic background in the topic of their project. Professional Certificates, some of which are authored by well-known employer brands such as AWS, Google, IBM, Intuit, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce, allow learners to efficiently reskill and upskill for new jobs. We offer a diverse selection of Professional Certificates from a wide range of roles, industries, brands, and languages, many of which have ACE and ECTS credit recommendations enabling more universities to accept the certificates for academic credit toward a degree program. Similarly, our technology platform allows instructors to efficiently launch one to two hour Guided Projects that teach the latest in-demand skills to learners with a hands-on learning experience.

Multi-channel Enterprise model. With a single content catalog and a unified technology and data platform, we are able to distribute content and credentials to a global audience of more than 1,300 paying businesses, academic institutions, and governmental organizations. Our technology enables our educator partners to reach large, globally distributed employee populations through the workplace and provide them with high-quality lifelong learning. Our technology also allows collaboration among institutional networks, so that businesses, universities, and government organizations can collaborate on Coursera by sharing content, program settings, licenses, and data insights.

Rich data analytics and skills graphs. Since all of our teaching and learning activities happen online, our platform is able to capture a significant amount of data across millions of enrollments related to teaching, learning, content, and outcomes. This data allows us to drive learner success through personalized learning, map skills to content and jobs through a system of machine-learning models, and unlock marketing efficiencies by automating and targeting communications with learners to generate engagement.

Competition

The market for global adult online learning is highly fragmented and rapidly evolving. We expect alternative modes of learning to continue to accelerate as players in this industry introduce new and more competitive products, enhancements, and bundles. Participants in the global adult online learning ecosystem include:

•Direct-to-consumer, online education companies: 2U, Inc., through its subsidiary edX Inc., and Udemy, Inc.;

•Companies that provide technology solutions and services to universities offering online learning programs: 2U, Inc., Eruditus Learning Solutions Pte. Ltd., Noodle Partners, Inc., and upGrad Education Private Limited;

•Corporate training companies: Skillsoft Corp., LinkedIn Corporation through its LinkedIn Learning services, Pluralsight, Inc., Udacity, Inc., and Udemy, Inc.;

•Providers of free educational resources: Khan Academy, Inc., The Wikipedia Foundation, Inc., and Google LLC (“Google”) through its YouTube services; and

•Internal online degree platforms: Online degree programs developed in-house by universities.

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Our Growth Strategy

We have seen strong growth since our founding in 2011. The combination of greater global access to technology and our open learning platform is unlocking the opportunity for more global citizens to enhance their education and earn credentials that help advance their careers. We believe that we have a large, underpenetrated addressable opportunity ahead of us to enable the digital transformation of higher education and provide lifelong adult learning at scale.

Key elements of our strategy of growing our business include:

Grow our content and credentials catalog and network of educator partners. We plan to continue to invest in growing our catalog of projects, courses, Specializations, certificates, and degrees across a broad range of topics and expanding our network of educator partners.

Improve conversion, upsell, and retention of paid Consumer learners. Our Consumer platform makes it easy for individuals to come to Coursera and learn, allowing for a natural progression of learners to go from free projects or courses to full online degrees. One of the tools used is Coursera Plus, launched in February 2020, which contributes to conversion and retention of paid Consumer learners. In 2023, over 65% of our cash receipts from Consumer offerings came from individual learners who were registered on our platform as of December 31, 2022.

Expand the number of online degrees and the number of students in Degrees programs. We believe we have an opportunity to increase the number of bachelor’s and master’s programs and postgraduate diplomas in new and existing academic disciplines within our current network of university partners. Over time, we also aim to naturally progress current open course university partners into Degrees partners. For existing Degrees program partners, we also intend to continue to increase the size of student cohorts in existing Degrees programs and add new online Degrees programs from these partners. We believe that our large, global learner base should give us a competitive advantage in delivering qualified international learners to Degrees partners in a cost-effective manner.

Continue to focus on growing our Enterprise business. Coursera’s growth is driven in part by expansion into new logos as well as broader penetration of learners within our existing base of business, university, and government customers. Our team identifies and engages with potential Enterprise customers. Once our platform has been adopted, we focus on expanding and growing our relationships with existing customers. Our relationships often begin with departmental deployments, evolving to multi-department and ultimately organization-wide utilization as our value is proven within our customers’ learner bases.

Continue global expansion. Approximately 46% of our revenue for the year ended December 31, 2023 came from learners outside of the U.S. We plan to continue to market our offerings and programs to individual learners, businesses, academic institutions, and governments globally, providing us broad access to the addressable market while also building on our global brand as a leading learning destination. We also continue to enhance the local learning experience, including machine-learning course translations, localized discovery, geographical pricing, payment methods, and regional credit recommendations.

Continue to grow our learner base and build our brand. We intend to continue to invest in increasing the number of registered learners on Coursera and increasing awareness of the Coursera brand. Our large learner base and brand create a virtuous cycle, increasing our value to educator partners and providing incentive for them to author additional content and credentials. This broader catalog, in turn, enhances the appeal of Coursera to learners, which grows our consumer learner base. We believe the content and credentials from our university and industry partners generate meaningful organic and unpaid traffic to Coursera, which reduces our cost of learner acquisition. A growing learner base also generates synergistic opportunities for other parts of our business, as some learners will go on to enroll in Degrees programs or provide us with Enterprise leads.

Sales and Marketing

Our sales and marketing efforts are focused on building a unified marketing system that connects individuals to lifelong learning opportunities throughout their academic and professional lives. Our strategy centers on leveraging the Coursera brand and our partners’ brands along with our large catalog of high-quality, freemium content to attract learners to Coursera efficiently.

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Once we attract learners to Coursera, our data-driven learner experience connects learners to the courses, certificates, and degree programs best-suited for them through a personalized discovery and nurture system and identifies whether they are a potential Enterprise prospect.

Learners come to Coursera primarily through free or low-cost acquisition channels such as public relations, word of mouth, and natural search. We also derive a smaller percentage of learners through cost-efficient paid advertising channels including an affiliate publisher network and paid search.

With our consumer brand, we can market categories of degree and certificate programs to learners earlier in their consideration process. This allows us to connect learners with targeted learning opportunities based on their background and goals. By connecting Coursera’s learners with relevant degree programs, we efficiently tap into latent degree demand from our consumer base and combine automated nurture strategies earlier in the funnel with higher-touch efforts to assist potential students who are further along in their purchase decision. We promote our courses, Specializations and entry-level Professional Certificates that can count as progress towards a degree both to allow prospective students to discover our Degrees and to increase conversion rates by enabling applicants to sample content and build interest and confidence before enrolling in one of our Degrees programs. For example, we are sourcing more programs with performance-based admissions, which allow learners to earn admission through successful completion of a series of courses. Performance-based admissions help to reduce traditional barriers associated with tests, application fees, and prior education or work experience. We believe pathways between our open content and credentials, particularly our entry-level Professional Certificates, and Degrees will provide a more accessible and affordable method for learners to progress in their education and careers.

The data from Coursera’s consumer ecosystem helps drive Enterprise marketing efficiency. Related insights, especially on how a company’s skill proficiencies stack up relative to the competition, based on the aggregated learning behaviors of consumer learners working at a given company, help us reach prospects with targeted skill development solutions.

Our Enterprise sales team identifies and engages with potential organizational and institutional customers around the world. With our international expansion, we have deployed a more regionally distributed approach to sales and account management with a focus on growing and upselling Enterprise accounts.

Research and Development

Our research and development team creates and maintains our platform, products, and insights to deliver a high-quality learning experience to our learners and customers cost-effectively and at scale. We leverage our large partner and customer base, our engaged learner community, and our focus on user-driven innovation to aggregate feedback on features and functionality and consistently improve our offerings and platform. Our production environment runs in a cloud environment, providing scalable storage and elastic computing.

We invest substantial resources in research and development to drive our technology innovation and bring new offerings and features to the market. Our research and development team is responsible for the design, development, and testing of features and offerings on our platform. They are also responsible for building and integrating tools and systems to help our services function deliver high-quality service at lower cost as we scale.

Our research and development teams are concentrated in California, Canada, and Bulgaria, but are expanding into other regions with our remote workforce that allows us to access diverse, talent-rich markets as we grow. We believe our research and development teams are diverse, bringing unique and essential perspectives to our platform.

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Intellectual Property

We rely on a combination of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, confidentiality procedures, contractual commitments and other legal rights and practices to protect our intellectual property, including our brand, proprietary information, technologies, processes, and the algorithms we use throughout our business. For example, as of December 31, 2023, we had 20 issued patents relating to technology features of our platform, including identity verification, content delivery and navigation, and automation, which patents expire between 2034 and 2040, and several U.S. pending patent applications also relating to certain technology features of our platform. Our principal trademark assets include the registered trademark “Coursera” and our logos and taglines. We also hold the rights to the “Coursera.org” internet domain name and various related domain names, which are subject to internet regulatory bodies and trademark and other related laws of each applicable jurisdiction. For important additional information related to our intellectual property position, please review the information set forth in “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Intellectual Property.”

Seasonality

We experience revenue fluctuations due to seasonal engagement patterns of individual learners and Enterprise customers, which may vary from quarter to quarter or year to year, and seasonal operating practices or engagement patterns of partners resulting from academic calendars or fiscal years that may differ from our own.

Historically, there has been an increase in enrollments from new and existing consumer learners in the first and fourth quarter of each year as the result of various holiday promotions offered during these periods. Additionally, revenue from Enterprise customers varies quarter-over-quarter due to the timing of our launches of new course content, offerings, and features.

The Degrees student count is affected by the seasonality of the school class cycles, combined with the underlying growth interacting with those trends. For quarter-over-quarter fluctuations, the number of Degrees students fluctuates in part because the academic terms for each degree program often begins and/or ends within different calendar quarters, and the frequency with which each degree program is offered within a given year varies.

Human Capital Resources

At Coursera, we create and nurture a system of equitable employee services and workplace experiences to help employees perform at their best and to deliver our mission of transforming lives through learning. As of December 31, 2023, 1,295 full-time employees make up a global community that is driven by a shared purpose and transformative impact. Our team also engages contractors and consultants for auxiliary services and support.

Our focus on building a great place to work has resulted in a strong culture that values innovation and results at scale. Our employees are proud to work at Coursera and of the positive social impact that we can make together. To further enable our ability to grow and fulfill our public benefit objectives, we continue to invest in attracting, retaining, and developing team members while enhancing diversity and inclusion in our workforce.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”)

Building a more diverse workforce powers our ability to deliver on Coursera's mission: it fuels the performance and innovation we need to provide universal access to world-class learning, and it inspires collaboration to help us create inclusive learning alongside our university and industry partners and Enterprise customers.

At Coursera, we strive to promote a culture of continuous learning and improvement. For the last ten years, we have measured employee engagement and tracked employees’ perspectives on important issues through our employee engagement surveys. Our participation rate continues to be high, at 97% for 2023. Employee engagement survey results provide important insight into organizational health and allow us to address opportunities for improvement in more focused and meaningful ways.

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Our DEI initiatives and programs also strengthen our workplace culture and support talent acquisition and retention goals. We support our DEI strategies to enhance workplace diversity, promote cross-cultural learning, and advance our ongoing efforts to build a company where everyone can thrive. We approach DEI through three strategic pillars: workplace, workforce, and marketplace.

Workplace. Diversity of identity, voice, background, and experience are all key elements of our employee value proposition. We continue to drive meaningful change in our representation while strengthening brand credibility within underrepresented population communities by building, assessing, and evolving our goals for attracting, engaging, hiring, and growing talent.

Workforce. As an organization, we are committed to DEI in our workforce and the evolution of our values and culture. We focus on early and consistent engagement with various communities and tracking inclusive practices. That means continued assessment of equitable talent pipeline development, hiring, and advancement across our diverse talent pools. We also support our employee resource groups, which are employee-led groups that foster inclusivity and build community by cultivating a positive and engaging culture in which employees of different backgrounds, lifestyles, and abilities are respected and can thrive. They represent the perspectives of our diverse learners, customers, and partners through a focus on DEI and social impact.

Marketplace. Coursera's mission sits at the core of our commitments and DEI efforts, and we recognize the impact our work product brings to our global learner base, Enterprise customers, and educator partners. We want to ensure that they are represented in our content, product, brand and business strategy.

Talent

We build distributed teams of diverse talent that represent our global community of learners in order to inspire the innovation that will transform lives through learning. We do this through embracing a work from anywhere hiring strategy to attract and retain top global talent. Similar to the ways in which we help millions of learners transform their lives through courses and degrees on our platform, we also encourage and empower Coursera employees to learn and grow at work.

We offer learning programs and tools to support employees on their personal learning journeys and to promote organizational learning objectives. Through our internal learning program called SkillUp, employees have access to a sizable catalog of courses, specializations, and certificates on the Coursera platform to help employees build job-relevant skills and advance their careers. Employees can also choose to go deeper: For employees who are accepted into select degree programs on Coursera, we proudly offer scholarships that cover 100% of tuition and fees.

We aspire for Coursera to be a place where employees are challenged and stretched and will continue investing in employee development opportunities that enable team members to maximize their impact and grow their careers.

Total Rewards and Pay Equity

We provide competitive compensation. Compensation at Coursera is fair, routinely benchmarked to be market-competitive, and focused on performance. To align compensation and performance, we have established an on-going cadence for performance reviews that supplement a culture that is core to Coursera of regular, open, and casual feedback.

Furthermore, our compensation practices are designed to help ensure fair and equal pay to all employees regardless of gender, identity, race, age, or other protected characteristics. We routinely review our pay structures to identify possible pay disparities and opportunities to improve our pay practices.

Employee Wellness

Our workforce strategies prioritize employee well-being and take an integrated approach to mental, physical, and financial well-being for our employees. These efforts include providing access to free wellness programs such as therapy and access to wellness coaching, mindfulness training, and live community sessions; stipends for home office equipment and internet services; access to co-working spaces around the globe as well as a variety of events to foster employee engagement, connection, and collaboration.

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Regulatory Matters

As a public company with global operations, we are subject to various federal, state, local, and foreign laws, rules, and regulations. Compliance with these laws, rules, and regulations has not had a material effect on our capital expenditures, results of operations, and competitive position as compared to prior periods. Nevertheless, compliance with existing or future governmental regulations, including, but not limited to, those related to higher education, consumer and data protection, intellectual property, government contracting, global trade, business acquisitions, antitrust, employment, anti-corruption, accounting standards, corporate governance, tax, and AI ethics and machine learning, could have a material impact on our business in future periods.

Higher Education Regulations

As a service provider to higher education institutions both in the U.S. and internationally, either directly or indirectly through our arrangements with partners, we are required to comply with various education laws and regulations.

Higher education is heavily regulated in the U.S. and most international jurisdictions, and our university partners are subject to extensive legislation, regulation, and oversight. The regulations, standards, and policies they are governed by and must adhere to are complex, change frequently, and are often subject to differing interpretations and can be implemented with little to no interpretative guidance. These changes could compromise our university partners’ accreditation, authorization to offer online learning in various states or countries, permissible activities, or access to U.S. federal funds under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (respectively, “Title IV” and “HEA”).

At times, our university partners are subject to regulations that were designed to address in-person, correspondence or other types of learning experiences not offered online and may be difficult to interpret or apply to the types of programs they offer on our platform. Degrees or certifications earned through an institution in one jurisdiction may not be recognized as valid or sufficient in other jurisdictions, including internationally, for employment, to satisfy prerequisites for advanced degrees, or other opportunities. Additionally, numerous U.S. states require education providers to be licensed or authorized in such a state simply to enroll persons located in that state into an online education program or to conduct related activities, such as marketing.

The vast majority of our U.S.-based college and university partners participate in the federal student financial assistance programs under Title IV, and are subject to extensive regulation by the U.S. Department of Education (“DOE”), as well as various state agencies, licensing boards, and accrediting agencies. To participate in Title IV programs, an institution must receive and maintain authorization by the appropriate state education agencies, be accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the DOE, and be certified by the DOE as an eligible institution. The increased scrutiny and results-based accountability initiatives in the education sector, as well as ongoing policy differences in Congress regarding spending levels, could lead to significant changes in connection with the upcoming reauthorization of the HEA or otherwise. These changes may place additional regulatory burdens on postsecondary schools participating in Title IV programs generally, and specific changes may be targeted at companies such as ours that serve higher education within the U.S. Regulatory activities and initiatives of the DOE may have similar consequences for our business even in the absence of Congressional action.

Authorization and Approval

Our U.S.-based university partners are required to obtain the appropriate approvals from the DOE and applicable state and accrediting regulatory agencies for new programs. Similar approvals and reviews may be required for programs from our educator partners based outside of the U.S. and for our partners to offer programs in other countries.

Our educator partners, both U.S. and international, may also be required to be authorized in certain states to offer online programs, engage in advertising or recruiting, and operate externships, internships, technical training, or other forms of field experience, depending on state or international law. Although many of our programs are offered by U.S.-based higher education institutions that hold such authorizations or participate in an appropriate state reciprocity agreement such as the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (“SARA”), other educator partners are not traditional education institutions or operate outside of the U.S. and do not hold such state authorizations. Some institutions, including California higher education institutions, currently do not participate in SARA.

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We or our educator partners may also be required to obtain appropriate approvals under international education laws and regulations. For example, a recent Indian regulation relating to online higher education requires, among other things, that learning platforms utilized by Indian universities to offer online degrees be approved by a technical committee of the Indian regulator.

Accreditation

Accrediting agencies primarily examine the academic quality of the instructional programs of an educational institution, and a grant of accreditation is typically viewed as confirmation that an institution or an institution’s programs meet generally accepted academic standards. Accrediting agencies also review the administrative and financial operations of the institutions they accredit to ensure that each institution has the resources to perform its educational mission. The DOE also relies on accrediting agencies to determine whether institutions qualify to participate in Title IV programs.

Although we are not an accredited institution and are not required to maintain accreditation, accrediting agencies are responsible for reviewing an accredited institution’s third-party contracts with service providers like us and may require that an institution obtain approval from, or notify the accreditor in connection with, such arrangements. We work closely with our university partners, which are accredited institutions, to assure that the applicable standards of their respective accreditors are met.

DOE “Dear Colleague”Letter (“DCL”)

Each institution that participates in Title IV programs agrees, as a condition of its eligibility to participate in those programs, that it will not “provide any commission, bonus, or other incentive payment based directly or indirectly on success in securing enrollments or financial aid to any persons or entities engaged in any student recruiting or admission activities or in making decisions regarding the award of student financial assistance.” The vast majority of our U.S.-based university partners participate in the Title IV programs. Although this rule, referred to as the incentive compensation rule, generally prohibits entities or individuals from receiving incentive-based compensation payments for the successful recruitment, admission, or enrollment of learners, the DOE provided clarifying guidance in March 2011 interpreting the incentive compensation rule as permitting tuition revenue-sharing arrangements known as the “bundled services exception.” Our current degrees business model relies heavily on the bundled services exception to enter into tuition revenue-sharing agreements with our U.S.-based university partners.

The DCL issued by the DOE on March 17, 2011 sets forth the guidance of the DOE regarding various regulations that were implemented around that time. The DCL affirms that “[t]he Department generally views payment based on the amount of tuition generated as an indirect payment of incentive compensation based on success in recruitment and therefore a prohibited basis upon which to measure the value of the services provided.” The DCL, however, in Example 2-B, clarified an important exception to this prohibition for a business model that complies with the bundled services exception: “A third party that is not affiliated with the institution it serves and is not affiliated with any other institution that provides educational services, which third party provides bundled services to the institution including marketing, enrollment application assistance, recruitment services, course support for online delivery of courses, the provision of technology, placement services for internships, or student career counseling, may receive from an institution an amount based on tuition generated for the institution by the third-party’s activities for all bundled services that are offered and provided collectively, as long as the third party does not make prohibited compensation payments to its employees, and the institution does not pay the third party separately for student recruitment services provided by the entity.”

The DCL guidance indicates that an arrangement that complies with Example 2-B will be deemed to be in compliance with the incentive compensation provisions of the HEA and the DOE’s regulations. Our business model and contractual arrangements with our U.S.-based university partners are designed to follow Example 2-B in the DCL. However, the inherent ambiguity in the DCL and the incentive compensation rule creates the risk that DOE or a court, including, notably, in the context of a “whistleblower” claim under the federal False Claims Act, could disagree with that interpretation. If the DOE or a court determined that our business model or even the practices of a subcontractor did not meet the bundled services exception, we could have contractual obligations to our U.S.-based partners such as indemnifying a partner from private claims, government investigations, or demands for repayment of Title IV program funds.

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Further, because the bundled services rule was promulgated by agency guidance through the DCL and is not codified by statute or regulation, there is risk that the exception could be altered or removed without prior notice, public comment period, or other administrative procedural requirements that accompany formal agency rulemaking. For example, the DOE recently issued new guidance expanding the application of third-party servicer requirements, including an annual audit requirement, to any entity providing recruitment services or content. The DCL has been criticized by commentators and lawmakers, including in a June 2022 report by the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations, which urged the DOE to rescind the guidance, and in a recent commentary authored by Representative DeLauro, the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee and the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee. On February 15, 2023, the DOE announced that it is reviewing its DCL guidance on incentive compensation compliance. The DOE has not announced the results of this review. In addition, the legal weight the DCL would carry in litigation over the propriety of any specific compensation arrangements under the HEA or the incentive compensation rule is uncertain. We can offer no assurances as to whether the exception in the DCL would be upheld by a court or how it would be interpreted.

Misrepresentation Rule

Under our contracts with U.S.-based college and university partners, we are required to comply with other regulations promulgated by the DOE and comparable state laws that affect our marketing activities, including the misrepresentation rule. The misrepresentation rule is broad in scope and applies to statements our employees or agents may make about the nature of an educator partner’s program, their financial charges, or the employability of their program graduates.

Specifically, the HEA prohibits an institution that participates in the Title IV programs from engaging in any “substantial misrepresentation” regarding three broad subject areas: (1) the nature of the school’s education programs, (2) the school’s financial charges, and (3) the employability of the school’s graduates. In 2010, as part of the program integrity rules, the DOE revised its regulations in order to significantly expand the scope of the misrepresentation rule. Although some of the DOE’s most expansive amendments to the misrepresentation rule were overturned by the courts in 2012, most of the 2010 amendments survived and remain in effect.

Violations of the misrepresentation rule are subject to various sanctions by the DOE and violations may be used as a basis for legal action by third parties. Similar rules apply under state laws or are incorporated in institutional accreditation standards and the Federal Trade Commission applies similar rules prohibiting any unfair or deceptive marketing practices to the education sector.

Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”)

We are required to comply with FERPA, which generally prohibits an institution of higher education from disclosing personally identifiable information (“PII”) from a learner’s education records without the learner’s consent. Our U.S.-based university degree and certificate partners and Coursera for Campus customers and their learners disclose to us certain information that originates from or composes a learner education record under FERPA. Through our contracts to provide services to institutions, we are indirectly subject to FERPA, and we may not transfer or otherwise disclose any PII from a learner record to another party other than in a manner permitted under the statute and any applicable contract. In the event that we disclose learner information in violation of FERPA, the DOE could require a partner to suspend our access to their learner information for at least five years.

For additional discussion of regulatory risks, see “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Regulatory Matters and Litigation.”

Public Benefit Corporation (“PBC”) Status

On February 1, 2021, we amended our certificate of incorporation to become a Delaware PBC. We believe being a PBC reinforces our long-term commitment to providing global access to affordable and flexible world-class learning and aligns with our mission, culture, and values.

PBCs are intended to produce a public benefit and to operate in a responsible and sustainable manner. Under Delaware law, PBCs are required to identify in their certificate of incorporation the public benefit they will promote, and their directors have a duty to manage the affairs of the corporation in a manner that balances the pecuniary interests of the stockholders, the best interests of those materially affected by the corporation’s conduct, and the specific public benefit identified in the certificate of incorporation. They are also required to publicly disclose a report that assesses their public benefit performance at least every two years.

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Our public benefit purpose, as stated in our certificate of incorporation, is “to provide global access to flexible and affordable high-quality education that supports personal development, career advancement, and economic opportunity.”

Certified B Corporation TM (“B Corp”) Status

In addition to being a PBC under Delaware law, we are a B Corp. The term “B Corp” does not refer to a particular form of legal entity, but instead refers to companies that are certified by B Lab, an independent nonprofit organization, for meeting rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

The process for becoming a B Corp involves completing and passing a comprehensive and objective assessment of a business’s positive impact on society and the environment, which includes over 200 questions measuring the business’s impact on its customers, employees, communities, and the environment, as well as a validation process that includes review of supporting documentation and verification interviews. Once certified, every B Corp must make its assessment score publicly available on B Lab’s website. Acceptance as a B Corp and continued certification is at B Lab’s sole discretion. We believe that our status as a B Corp further demonstrates our commitment to our mission and public benefit purpose.

Our Social Impact Programs

Coursera Social Impact Programs

Universal access to world-class learning is critical for social change. Since 2016, our social impact initiatives have provided underserved learners with access to high-quality education that supports personal development, career advancement, and economic opportunity. Through our social impact programs, we have worked with more than 100 nonprofit and community organizations to provide free access to our learning resources for more than 260,000 social impact learners across the globe.

Available Information

Our website is located at www.coursera.org, and our investor relations website is located at investor.coursera.com. The reports we file with or furnish to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) pursuant to Section 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 are available, free of charge, on our investor relations website at investor.coursera.com as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the SEC. These reports and filings can also be accessed at www.sec.gov.

We disclose material information to the public through a variety of means, including SEC filings, press releases, company blog posts, public conference calls and webcasts, and our investor relations website. We use these channels to communicate with investors and the public about Coursera, our products and services, and other matters. Therefore, we encourage investors, the media and others interested in Coursera to review the information we make public in these locations, as this information may be deemed material.

Further, corporate governance information, including our corporate governance guidelines, code of business conduct and ethics, and committee charters, is also available on our investor relations website.

The content of, or information accessible through, our websites are not incorporated by reference into this Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC. Any references to our websites are intended to be inactive textual references only.