Instructure
Instructure Holdings, Inc. is an educational technology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is the developer and publisher of Canvas, a web-based learning management system (LMS).
History
The company was founded in 2008 by two BYU graduate students, Brian Whitmer and Devlin Daley. Its initial funding came from Mozy founder Josh Coates, who served as Instructure's CEO from 2010 to 2018 and chairman of the board through 2020.
In December 2010, the Utah Education Network (UEN), a representative of a number of Utah colleges and universities, announced that Instructure would be replacing Blackboard. By 2013, the company's customer base had increased to 9 million users.
In 2011, Instructure launched Canvas, a learning management system. The company announced that Canvas would be made freely available under an Affero General Public License (AGPL) license as open-source software. Canvas became available on iOS in 2011, and on Android in 2013. As of 2020, Canvas was used in approximately 4,000 institutions worldwide.
In 2015, Instructure launched Bridge, a cloud-based corporate learning management system. It was acquired by Learning Technologies Group (LTG) in 2021.
As of 2015, the company had raised $90 million in funding from investors. On November 13, 2015, the firm began trading as a publicly held company on the New York Stock Exchange.
In 2020, Thoma Bravo acquired the company for $2 billion. In June 2021, Instructure again filed for an IPO, and began trading under the symbol INST.
In 2024, it was announced that KKR and Dragoneer had completed their purchase of the company for $4.8 billion.
In 2024, Instructure announced the acquisition of Parchment, a credential management platform.