Intel Capital Leads $30 Million Investment in Online Textbook Publisher, Kno

Based in Santa Clara, California, Kno, which is a market leader in online textbook publishing has announced on April 8, 2011, that it has secured a $30 million investment led by Intel Capital in a series C funding round. Other investors who participated in this funding round include Advanced Publications, which is also a new investor to the company. Kno’s existing investors, Andreesen Horowitz, First Round Capital, FLOODGATE, and SV Angels. The lion’s share of the funding round was provided by Intel Capital, which is the investment arm of Intel Processors, the manufacturer of the famous Pentium Central Processing Unit line of CPUs installed in many of the computers in service worldwide.

Kno is revolutionizing the textbook industry as more educational institutions, public and private schools worldwide are going online and many of the curricula are becoming computerized. Computerization of class curricula are not only limited to grade and high schools, but many colleges and universities are also going online for many of their classes. Furthermore, many colleges and universities offer online classes to people online nationwide where people can learn and earn a degree from the comforts of their own home. Kno has taken a lead position in this rapidly growing industry by designing textbooks that can be interactive with the students who are taking online classes.

Founded in 2009, Kno was founded by a seasoned internet entrepreneur who founded many other collegiate related internet companies, Osman Rashid, who is the cofounder of the widely used online textbook purchasing and rental site, Chegg. Another cofounder who joined Rashid in founding Kno, is a seasoned entrepreneur in the consumer electronics industry, Babur Habib. Kno was founded on the basis to make textbooks more interesting and fun to use. The actual name of the company, Kno, was designed to be a shortened term for Knowledge. The idea behind Kno is to make textbooks come alive with multimedia educational materials that include text, video, audio, and colorful graphics.

What has made Kno attractive to Intel is that the use of tablets, such as the Apple iPad and other similar tablet devices are being used on a regular basis and the object of Intel is to coordinate together with Kno to develop its textbook software to work on such tablets and develop its revolutionary textbook software to work on tablets which students can use to study their course material on the go. This is the main reason why Intel Capital has invested the largest portion of $20 million in this funding round.

According to Intel’s executive vice president and president of Intel Capital, Arvind Sodhani, Intel, as a major tech corporation is very excited to be able to join into a partnership with a very unique company, team of entrepreneurs, who have developed an innovative learning program which can be incorporated in Intel’s line of electronic learning devices and in tablets designed to give the students that special one-to-one learning experience, which students have only been able to get with certain professors or teachers in the past. Mr. Sodhani further added that the software solutions that Kno has designed directly corresponds with what Intel’s e-learning ideals.

Mr. Rashid, who also works for Kno as its CEO, further stated that he and the other cofounders of Kno are excited to be able to broaden their products into the broader markets that Intel is able to provide them. Mr. Rashid further added that he is glad that the executives at Intel, which helped him make this agreement share the same ideas about making education more fun and engaging for students.

The innovative technology that Kno has developed has also found favor with Bill Kircos, who is the general manager of Intel’s NetBook and Tablet line of products. The Atom Processors and related technologies are a great fit for the touch-based textbook software that Kno offers, added Mr. Kircos.

Intel Capital is the strategic corporate investor of Intel, which has its claim to fame from its Pentium Processors, many of which are the central processing units in many of the personal computers worldwide. The primary function of Intel Capital is to find unique companies with innovative technologies that can benefit Intel and enhance its technologies. Besides companies who develop a wide range of different software products, Intel Capital also invests in companies which develop computer hardware, and other devices that are aimed towards business services, consumer electronics, internet, and social media. Intel Capital also invests in companies which design and develop semiconductors, used in most computer hardware devices. Some other companies in Intel Capital’s portfolio include Adaptive Computing, Airway Communications, Althena, and others.