Analysis · AI in education
AI in education and the end of EdTech as we knew it
The technology education waited for has finally arrived. It may be the thing that ends most of the EdTech industry.
After a decade building in EdTech, I expect 90 to 95 percent of today's EdTech companies to close, consolidate or become irrelevant within a few years. Not because people stop learning, but because learning is moving into AI models, and the industry was built around a different way of delivering knowledge. This page sets out the argument and connects the six essays where I make it in full.
Four shifts
How AI is changing education
Capital left first
Funding for EdTech fell long before the products did, and specialist funds quietly widened their mandate from education to skills, work and human capital. When the money changes its vocabulary, the market has already moved.
Learning moved, it did not stop
People have not stopped learning. They now ask a model, mid-task, in plain language. Courses, catalogues and platforms were built for a world where knowledge had to be packaged first and consumed later.
The customer can build
Schools, universities and companies spent twenty years being told not to build their own software. AI shortens the distance between wanting a tool and having one, so the buyer becomes a competitor.
Compression, not extinction
The capabilities EdTech created are not disappearing. What disappears is the amount of independent industry needed to deliver them: fewer companies, folded into models, platforms and institutions.
EdTech trends
The future of learning
The question is no longer whether AI belongs in the classroom. It is who owns the layer where learning now happens, and what survives for the companies, schools and governments that built everything around the old one. I set out my expectations for 2029 in I Meant Ninety Percent.
- 1Learning happens inside general AI assistants rather than dedicated learning platforms.
- 2Content libraries lose value as models generate explanations, exercises and feedback on demand.
- 3Institutions build more of their own tools, with smaller vendors at the edges.
- 4Assessment and credentials, not content, become the contested ground.
- 5A small number of global technology providers mediate more of the learning experience, which makes education a sovereignty question, especially in Europe.
- 6Pedagogy matters more, not less, but only where the economics let it stay at the centre.
The series
How 90% of EdTech Disappears
- Part 1If I Operated an EdTech Fund, I Would Be Shitting My PantsAfter a decade building in edtech, I think 90–95% of today's edtech companies will close, consolidate, or become irrelevant within 2–3 years.
- Part 2Your EdTech Investor Wants an Open RelationshipHow 90% of edtech disappears: the money left first, and then the specialist funds quietly changed their type, from edtech to learning, skills, work and human capital.
- Part 3EdTech Is Still Mailing DVDsHow 90% of edtech disappears: people have not stopped learning, they have started consuming knowledge differently, and that distinction may wipe out much of the industry.
- Part 4When Your Customer Becomes Your Competitor: Your Customer Found a Shortcut to the Software FactoryPart four of how 90% of edtech disappears. Software companies spent twenty years convincing customers not to build. Artificial intelligence is changing the distance between wanting software and making it.
- Part 5The Great EdTech CompressionPeople have not stopped learning. The capabilities EdTech built are not disappearing either. What is disappearing is the amount of independent industry required to deliver them.
- Part 6I Meant Ninety PercentWhat I expect to happen to EdTech companies by July 2029, and why the industry can disappear without every company going bankrupt.
Related essays
- If I See One More Person Push “PedTech,” I’m Going to Vomit
- What If Software Has a Soul?
- AI Ate the Internet. Now We Want It to Decide What’s Human.
I speak about AI in education at conferences and universities, most recently a keynote at 1EdTech Europe Learning Impact in Thessaloniki. See speaking.