A 200-year-old company may go public after AI-powered educational products.
If a 20th-century icon seems outdated in the 21st century, the Encyclopaedia Britannica—now known as Britannica—is all about artificial intelligence, and it could go public for nearly $1 billion, according to a report. New York Times.
Until 2012 when it went out of print, the company’s books served as the world’s oldest English-language encyclopedias, gathering all the world’s information in one place before Google or Wikipedia were even a thing. That helped Britannica usher in the AI era, where models benefit from access to high-quality, vetted information. More general purpose models like ChatGPT suffer from fraud because they are all over the internet, including all the rubbish and misinformation.
While it still offers an online version of its encyclopedia, and the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Britannica’s main business today is selling online educational software to schools and libraries, software it hopes to supercharge with AI. That could mean using AI to customize learning programs for each student. The idea is that students will enjoy learning more when the software helps them understand gaps in their understanding of a topic and stay with it for longer. Another education technology company, Brainly, recently announced that responses from its chatbot will link directly to the learning materials (ie textbooks) they refer to.
CEO of Britannica Jorge Cauz he also told Times about the company’s Britannica AI chatbot, which allows users to ask questions about its vast database of encyclopedic knowledge that it has collected over two centuries of vetted academics and editors. The company also offers chatbot software for customer service use cases.
Britannica told the Times it expects revenue to double from two years ago, to $100 million.
A company in the educational textbook space that has seen its fortunes take a different turn is Chegg. The company saw its stock price drop almost in lockstep with the rise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, as students canceled their subscriptions to its online information platform.
Similar to Wikipedia’s rise earlier, it seems that many people appreciate the accessibility and convenience of ChatGPT, even if they know that it cannot be completely trusted. Chegg has long had an online homework help Q&A forum where users can pay to post questions and get answers. But during the pandemic it saw a lot of new users, threw contractors to answer new questions, and they couldn’t keep up with ChatGPT. Users have complained that solutions on Chegg are often inaccurate, especially when posted by other users rather than experts.
Perhaps Britannica’s famous brand and heritage will help it succeed in this new era where chatbots are ready to return inaccurate information. It seems that schools are willing to at least pay for access to something they are very confident in.
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