Amid Doubts About U.S. Market, Education Companies Look to Branch Out Globally

Michelle Cho had planned that this would be the year her company — Gladeo — raised money to embark on a national expansion across the United States.

Launched as a regional workforce development platform, Gladeo shifted its primary focus to the K-12 and higher education markets over the last year and a half.

The company provides a career exploration and navigation platform to regional education hubs in several states, along with a digital career development curriculum currently used by some districts in California, Texas, and Colorado.

The idea was straightforward: Raise funds, hire a bigger sales team, and focus on winning new customers across the country.

But the financing environment for a startup like Gladeo was soft last year when the company spoke with investors. And the broader K-12 spending landscape was also tightening, Cho said.

As a result, the company paused its fundraising plans for a U.S. expansion. Fortunately, it was beginning to gain traction with another, highly attractive set of a customers: Those based internationally.

Her company is one of many that has sought to pivot and expand its role in global markets, as the business climate in U.S. school systems has become uncertain. Much of the uncertainty is tied to a raft of new policies pushed by the Trump administration — from potential cuts to federal education funding to the imposition of sweeping tariffs.

Leaders of organizations like Cho’s aren’t giving up on the American market — it’s far too large, and lucrative for that — but they say targeting new buyers in Latin America, the Middle East, and other regions gives them other options for growth.

Months before Gladeo halted fundraising for a U.S. expansion, the company won a U.S. Education Department contest for career navigation tools built to assist adult learners. That, Cho said, generated international exposure for Gladeo, and the company received “inbound requests from different countries.”

So Cho, the Gladeo CEO and co-founder, shifted the company’s growth aspirations to make international markets a core part of the its growth strategy.

Gladeo partnered with an investor who specializes in helping education companies grow their global footprint.

Now, the company is expanding into two massive markets abroad — India and Latin America — and it expects to start generating international revenue by the third-quarter of this year.

“I’m glad we went this route because the domestic [K-12] landscape is completely different from four or five months ago,” she said. “There’s an overall anxiety about losing money, but you don’t feel that with India because they’re not dependent on American federal funding.”

For years, global markets have presented opportunities for education companies to diversify revenue and grow their customer base.

But is now — as economic unease stews not just in the U.S., but globally — the right time for ed-tech companies to think about expanding into new markets internationally?

EdWeek Market Brief interviewed consultants, analysts, and education executives about the viability of providers taking their products and services abroad at a time of lingering unpredictability in the K-12 marketplace, as new risks loom because of tariffs and broader global economic concerns.

They generally agree: International markets are ripe for growth, particularly in countries and regions with emerging economies where digital education infrastructure is still developing and where governments are putting a new emphasis on improving access and quality in education.

Waiting for Clarity

Gladeo had been facing two obstacles in the U.S. K-12 marketplace, said Cho.

The first is that the company has sought to sell its curriculum to Title I and IDEA schools, which some analysts believe could face funding cuts or restrictions, as a result of Trump administration policies.

The other challenge Cho sees is that Gladeo is not a core curriculum product — it is supplemental — and she believes its focus could leave it vulnerable if state and local funding streams are reduced and districts focus on essential products.

“It’s not that funding has disappeared. It’s the uncertainty. There’s now a wait-and-see attitude from a lot of our school customers,” Cho said.

George DeBakey, who has consulted education companies trying to work internationally for more than two decades, said he’s had an increase in companies contacting him recently and asking, “Do we need to be thinking about overseas markets now?”

Those vendors are talking about how “ESSER funding is gone, or how schools may not have the budget resources that they’ve had in the past,” he said. “And I tell them ‘Are you aware of how good the markets are overseas in certain areas, like the Middle East and Asia?’”

Interest from U.S. companies in entering global markets has been steady over the last couple of years, said Michael Spencer, CEO of Global Expansion Strategies, an investment consulting firm that helps education companies enter international markets.

But in the last six months or so, that’s increased, he said, to the point of “overwhelming demand.”

Some companies are “desperate” because they are concerned about U.S. sales stagnating.

“They are looking now to redirect their efforts and resources to go international,” said Spencer, who is working with Gladeo on its expansion into India and Latin America.

Tariffs the Great Unknown

A number of factors are opening doors for education companies to expand across international borders.

One is that education ministries around the world have made big investments in K-12 following pandemic-related disruptions.

And international private school chains in some regions have been growing at a rapid pace, opening even more channels for U.S. education organizations to find business opportunities abroad.

An estimated 7.4 million students attend international private schools, an increase of 48 percent over the last decade, according to ISC Research, which collects data on international schools.

“The good news is for many of these schools, funding is not necessarily an issue,”DeBakey said. “And they’re always looking for new technology.”

In-demand products and services on the global stage include: artificial intelligence tools; virtual and augmented reality; English-language and literacy programs; STEM; career and technical education; and support for special-needs populations.

Yet many economists have speculated that the Trump administration’s aggressive tariff policies, which have rattled financial markets, could push the U.S., and possibly the global economy, into a recession. That could present a more challenging environment for education companies trying to raise capital to pay for international expansion.

However, the consultants and company officials interviewed for this story believe that the prospects in global markets remain strong, particularly in emerging economies where digital education infrastructure is still developing. And where government policy is leading the charge.

Enzo Cavalie, a principal at venture capital firm Reach Capital who focuses on Latin America, said the current economic tumult does not present a significant deterrent to education companies’ ambitions for international growth.

“In ‘21, and ‘22, when we had the tech recession … that was definitely a moment where a lot of internationalization plans were revisited, and I would say probably cut in many cases,” he said. “But those have been slowly coming back in the last year.”

It’s still too early to know what impact new tariffs could have on global K-12 markets, said Chinmay Jhaveri, principal and leader of the education practice at L.E.K. Consulting.

Many ed-tech vendors have products delivered via software or the Internet, and wouldn’t directly be impacted by new tariffs.

However, some education companies rely on components manufactured in other countries, which could be subject to Trump’s new taxes on imports.

In addition, there’s lurking uncertainty about a plethora of downstream implications of the tariffs.

Products In Demand for Private Schools

One potential scenario: Tariffs cause an economic slowdown that affects the movement of expatriates globally — and that, in turn, would negatively impact enrollment at international private schools, said Jhaveri.

But he cautioned that even in that situation, there are K-12 markets in Asia and the Middle East that would remain robust growth opportunities because the “demand is that sticky.”

That includes markets such as Saudi Arabia, where there is a big emphasis on expanding both the public and private education, as well as the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

All of those countries share a common thread, said Jhaveri.

“There is an increasing preference for international education, and more specifically there’s an increased preference for English [language] education in those countries,” he said. Companies are looking at those markets “quite actively.”

Global hot spots have remained the same for some time: The Middle East, India, parts of Asia, Latin America, and pockets of Europe. And despite a complex and fragmented market, Africa is also emerging as a place for foreign education companies to do business.

Al Kingsley is the CEO of NetSupport, a British company that sells a K-12 classroom instruction and monitoring tool and has a presence in 130 global markets. He pointed to Finland, Estonia, Australia, and Saudi Arabia as markets where government policy is driving new opportunities for foreign education companies.

“As organizations, we look at marketplaces where there is an appetite and a will to transform,” he said. Ultimately, that’s where “we see growth in the education system.”

Consumer Market Holds Appeal

Where does that leave the U.S. market in terms of its position in the global education market? Will foreign companies doing business in the U.S. cut back already existing operations? Or will foreign ed-tech firms hedge future investments in the U.S.?

Kingsley, the CEO of NetSupport, said there’s still a strong appetite among ed-tech companies to do business in the U.S., in particular because many are selling digital offerings that are not likely to be affected by new tariffs.

“There is a greater risk consideration,” he said. “Clearly the size of the U.S. market will always help offset that risk, but I think it puts greater pressure on the organizations to do their market research first.”

Spencer, the investor who specializes in international expansion, said foreign education companies are still “very interested” in entering the U.S., despite the uncertainty in the domestic K-12 marketplace.

Eighty percent of the companies in his firm’s portfolio are based outside the U.S. They include organizations in Brazil, Columbia, Israel, Finland, and Singapore.

“They’re all interested in coming to the United States,” Spencer said. “But we educate them on the challenges here.”

For some foreign companies, a B2C approach might work best as a way to test the waters of the U.S. market, said Cavalie, the Reach Capital investor who specializes in Latin America. It’s cheaper and more feasible for smaller and younger startups.

Not many Latin American education companies are capable of making the jump to enter the U.S. market and selling directly to school districts because there is so much competition, he said.

Direct-to-consumer sales of education products and services remain less popular in the U.S. than in some foreign countries, where parents spend big on outside-the-classroom learning tools. But Cavalie said there’s evolving synergy between the U.S. and Spanish-speaking countries that could yield new opportunities.

“The Hispanic market is [at] a very interesting midpoint right between the U.S. and Latin America,” he said. “That opens up markets in both directions.”

No Quick Fixes

Companies need to weigh the risks and ask a lot of questions internally before opting to expand abroad, said DeBakey, whose company focuses on helping companies sell their products and services in the Middle East.

He has a a checklist for any ed-tech vendor considering the move: Where are the growth opportunities for your products? What resources do you already have internally to assist? Do you have the capability to scale? And, possibly most important, is your leadership fully on board?

“Your top management has to be committed to going international,” he said. “It’s not going to be an instant success, but it can be very lucrative over time.”

DeBakey noted it could take at least six months before a company starts seeing financial returns on their international investment.

That’s about where Gladeo, the California-based career exploration and navigation digital tool provider, currently finds itself in the process. The company began speaking with an investor to help go abroad in September, and soon afterward it settled on which markets to target.

By December, Gladeo was pitching a reseller in India with its product, eventually giving him 100 licenses to pilot with students to get feedback about how to localize it. Now, the reseller is traveling around provinces, what Cho has dubbed a “road show,” presenting Gladeo’s products.

Cho said she’s expecting to start seeing returns on that investment soon. In Latin America, the company is in the process of partnering with an education company from Panama to be its strategic partner and reseller in the region.

Gladeo is not planning to open an office internationally, instead choosing to rely on resellers and strategic partners to be its boots on the ground. Cho said the goal is not only to eventually sell their product to private school operators but also to ministries of education.

Cho admits to having some hesitation during the process — “am I preemptively doing this too early? Maybe I should just 100 percent double-down on a domestic focus” — but roughly eight months into the expansion, she’s happy to have taken the chance.

“We’re in a good position now,” she said. “Judging from our conversations and the feedback that we’ve gotten with the pilot, I feel revenue from India is going to be more secure than the spring sales cycle domestically.”