Preply, a Ukrainian-founded, US-based language learning marketplace, has raised $150 million in a Series D funding round led by WestCap, valuing the company at $1.2 billion and earning it unicorn status.
- Founded in 2013 by Kirill Bigai and Dmytro Voloshyn, Preply operates a marketplace that connects learners with independent tutors for online one-to-one lessons. Preply supports instruction in more than 90 languages and hosts over 100,000 active tutors, serving learners across 180 countries.
- Rather than producing its own curriculum, the company provides infrastructure for tutors to offer personalized lessons, while using data and artificial intelligence to support functions such as tutor–learner matching, lesson summaries, homework generation, and progress tracking.
- Preply’s latest funding was in 2023, when the firm raised a $70 million Series C extension, bringing the total to $120 million. Investors in the round included Horizon Capital, Reach Capital, Hoxton Ventures, and Orbit Capital. The recent Series D round brought the company’s total funding to over $320 million.
"From day one, we strongly believed that language learning would continue to grow in importance. People want to communicate better, advance their careers, and explore new countries and cultures — and Preply addresses these needs perfectly. Today, the company is a world-class learning platform with seamless calendar management, payments, and powerful AI tools supporting both teachers and students," Wiktor Namysł, General Partner at Orbit Capital, told Vestbee.
- As of 2025, Preply employed roughly 750 people worldwide, including a large engineering team in Kyiv, and had been EBITDA-positive for over a year, indicating that its operating revenue exceeded operating expenses, excluding interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
Details of the deal
- Preply raised $150 million in a Series D round led by WestCap, a firm managing over $6 billion in assets, with existing investor Horizon Capital and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) also participating.
- The company plans to use the fresh funding to accelerate its expansion into artificial intelligence, focusing on developing AI-powered teaching assistants that enhance the language-learning experience.
- The investment will support tools that help tutors create lesson plans, summaries, and homework, improve learner–tutor matching, and scale Preply’s human-led tutoring model while maintaining a strong emphasis on personalized instruction.
"This investment will help us to continue to innovate at the intersection of human tutoring and AI, creating opportunities everywhere for people to connect, belong, succeed, and ultimately to progress in their lives no matter where they are in the world," explains Kirill Bigai, co-founder and CEO of Preply.
