Edtech specialist Udemy has completed its initial public offering of its stock priced at $29 apiece, the high end of its marketed range, and is set to start Nasdaq trading on Friday with a fully diluted market capitalization of over $4.5 billion.

The company raised $421 million late Thursday on the sale of 14.5 million shares. 

Insight PartnersNorwest Venture Partners and MIH Edtech Investments, a unit of Prosus NV, are the company's biggest shareholders.

Udemy, which isn't profitable yet, is an education marketplace that offers online classes focused on business and technical skills, as well as personal development. 

Founded in 2010, San Francisco-based Udemy was last valued at $3.3 billion when it raised a $50 million Series F in November 2020, according to PitchBook data.

The courses are offered both to individual learners and to employees via their organizations, and the company breaks out the related revenue into consumer and enterprise segments, respectively. Udemy has been making an active push to grow its higher-margin, subscription-based business unit at a faster clip than its consumer-facing offering, according to the company's S-1 filing.  

Revenue grew to $429.9 million in 2020, a 56% increase from $276.3 million the previous year. For the first half of 2021, revenue increased 24% compared to the same period last in 2020. In the meantime, Udemy has been inching closer to profitability.

Net losses decreased as a percentage of revenue from 26% in the first half of 2020 to 12% in the first half of this year.

While revenue growth has slowed after an initial pandemic-fueled boost in 2020, Udemy sees a big market opportunity in capturing a larger portion of the corporate training and learning market as it continues to "shift from offline to online," according to the company's S-1.
 
  Featured image by Peter Dazeley/Getty Images

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