Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
Chegg
American company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Remove ads
Chegg, Inc., is an American educational technology company based in Santa Clara, California. It provides homework help, digital and physical textbook rentals, textbooks, online tutoring, and other student services, powered by artificial intelligence.[1] The company has 6.6 million subscribers.[1]
The company has been criticized for facilitating cheating by students.
The name Chegg is a combination of the words chicken and egg, and references the founders’ catch-22 feeling of being unable to obtain a job without experience, while being unable to acquire experience without a job.[2]
Remove ads
History
Summarize
Perspective
2000s
In October 2000, Iowa State University students Josh Carlson, Mike Seager, and Mark Fiddleke launched Chegg's forerunner, Cheggpost, a Craigslist-style message board for Iowa State students.[3][4]
Carlson teamed with Osman Rashid, an avid user of the site who recognized its potential to disrupt the textbook market.[5] The company was incorporated in 2005 by Carlson, Rashid, and Aayush Phumbhra. At that time, it offered scholarship searches, internship matching, and college application advice.[6] Some initial start-up funding was provided by Rashid.[7]
In 2005, the founders purchased 2,000 textbooks and launched Textbookflix.com, based on Netflix's rental-based model, concentrating on renting textbooks to students.[8][9]
In February 2006, Carlson left the company.[7] Phumbhra and Rashid rebranded, launching Chegg in December 2007 with Rashid as CEO.[2][10][11]
In 2008, revenues were over $10 million; revenues in the month of January 2009 alone surpassed that amount.[2]
2010s
In June 2009, former Ask.com and Match.com CEO Jim Safka was name CEO of the company.[12]
In November 2009, the company raised $57 million in a financing round led by Insight Venture Partners.[13][14]
Former Guitar Hero CEO Dan Rosensweig was appointed CEO in February 2010.[15][16][17]
In March 2011, Chegg added features that allow students to select classes and ask for homework help on the Chegg site.[18]
In March 2012, the company raised $25 million from 17 investors.[19]
In November 2013, Chegg became a public company via an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, pricing shares at $12.50 each, raising $187.5 million, and valuing the company at $1.1 billion.[20][21][22]
In 2014, Chegg entered a partnership with book distributor Ingram Content Group to distribute all of Chegg's physical textbook rentals.[23][24]
In April 2017, Chegg and Pearson Education began a partnership whereby Pearson made 50 textbooks available only to rent and exclusively on Chegg.[25][26] The partnership ended in May 2021 after which Pearson sued Chegg for copyright infringement for selling answers to end-of-chapter questions included in Pearson textbooks.[27]
2020s
In June 2021, Chegg unveiled Uversity, an educational platform that provides a space for professors and other educators to share content.[28]
By May 2023, ChatGPT was a serious competitor to Chegg and Chegg announced the launch of Cheggmate, an artificial intelligence platform.[29][30]
By late 2024, the company was losing subscribers, attributed to competition from ChatGPT.[31][32]
In February 2025, Chegg sued Google, claiming that its AI Overviews reduce traffic to Chegg.[33][34]
In May 2025, Chegg announced plans to lay off about 22% of its workforce, or 248 employees, due to the competition from Google and ChatGPT.[35]
Acquisitions
In June 2010, Chegg acquired CourseRank in its first acquisition.[36] It was disabled in 2014.[37]
In December 2010, Chegg acquired Cramster.com, a provider of online homework help.[38]
In July 2011, Chegg acquired Notehall, an online marketplace for class notes.[39]
In September 2011, Chegg acquired Zinch, a scholarship search service for high school students and college recruiters.[40]
Chegg acquired software company 3D3R in November 2011 to develop its digital textbook product, kickstart its mobile product group, and open an engineering office in Rehovot, Israel.[41][42]
In June 2014, Chegg acquired online tutoring platform InstaEDU, for $30 million, which was renamed Chegg Tutors.[43][37][44]
In October 2014, Chegg acquired Internships.com for $11 million.[45][46]
In May 2016, Chegg acquired Imagine Easy Solutions, a provider of online bibliography and research tools, for $42 million.[47]
In February 2017, Chegg acquired RefME, a free citation management tool available on web, iOS and Android. It was shut down on March 7, 2017, and user accounts were transferred over to CiteThisForMe.[48]
In October 2017, the company acquired Cogeon GmbH, a German mathematics education provider, for €12.5 million in cash.[6][49]
In May 2018, Chegg acquired WriteLab, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze text and suggest improvements, for $15 million.[50][51]
In July 2018, Chegg acquired online flashcard tool StudyBlue for $20.8 million.[52][53]
In September 2019, Chegg acquired online coding, design, and data science school Thinkful for $80 million cash plus $20 million in cash or stock based on performance.[54][55]
In 2021, Chegg acquired Busuu, a computer-assisted language learning service, for $436 million in cash.[56][57][58]
Remove ads
Leadership
Chegg's board of directors consists of:[1]
- Dan Rosensweig, co-chair, president and CEO at Chegg
- Sarah Bond, Microsoft Corporation
- Richard Sarnoff, co-chair at Chegg; chair at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
- Renee Budig, EVP and CFO at CBS Interactive
- Melanie Whelan, Summit Partners
- Marne Levine, VP at Facebook
- Marcela Martin
- Ted Schlein, partner at Kleiner Perkins
- Jed York, co-chair at San Francisco 49ers
- Paul J. LeBlanc, president at Southern New Hampshire University
Remove ads
Controversies
Summarize
Perspective
Academic misconduct
Chegg has been accused of copyright infringement and facilitating cheating and academic dishonesty.[59] Chegg offers "homework help" where "Chegg experts" solve homework questions for students.[60][61] File-sharing, a form of academic dishonesty, also occurs in the form of students posting homework question sheets soliciting answers.[62]
In February 2019, Chegg formed a partnership with the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University to make online educational writing tools more accessible to its students.[63] The affiliation was met by some faculty criticism, alluding to Chegg helping students cheat,[59] even though the school guidelines explicitly prohibits using the service for such purpose.[64]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many students used personal computers that did not restrict the use of Chegg, leading to controversy.[61][65] Georgia Tech alerted students in a physics class that certain students in the class had cheated on their online final exam by using answers posted on Chegg,[65] certain students in a chemistry class at Boston University were found to have cheated on an online exam,[66] students from two chemistry classes at the University of British Columbia were accused of using Chegg for cheating on exams, including using two incorrect answers posted on Chegg,[67] and solutions to a physics exam at Washington University in St. Louis were posted on Chegg during the exam period.[68] Chegg cooperated with the investigations.[65][66][68]
A study published in 2020 found that Chegg answers student questions even though the questions have clear cues to indicate that the student is trying to cheat.[69] Some universities explicitly forbid students from using Chegg's homework help services.[70][71]
Some professors have posted fake answers to questions on Chegg to catch students who use Chegg to cheat.[72]
There are cases where students were subjected to blackmail by the Chegg employees who gave them answers.[73][74]
While Chegg shared information such as usernames, emails, or IP addresses to colleges in August 2022, Chegg changed its "honor code policy" to limit the information provided to universities and colleges. Chegg says that this change is to protect student privacy.[75]
Chegg was mentioned as an example of a website offering cheating services in the Higher Education Cheating Services Prohibition Bill, proposed in the UK.[76]
A lawsuit filed in 2022 accused the company of misleading investors, claiming that the growth of the company was "largely due to the facilitation of cheating—an unstable business proposition—rather than the strength of its business model or the acumen of its senior executives and directors".[77]
In a lawsuit filed in October 2024, Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) alleged that Chegg violated Australian laws by providing cheating services.[78]
Data breaches
In September 2018, Chegg announced that a data breach had occurred in April 2018. The breach may have provided access to user names, Chegg passwords, email addresses, and shipping addresses of 40 million active and inactive registered users. Social security numbers and bank account information were not affected by the breach.[79][80] In January 2023, the company agreed to several requirements by the Federal Trade Commission including comprehensive security controls, enabling consumer data access, and minimizing data collection.[81][82]
Remove ads
Philanthropy
In July 2022, Chegg partnered with Varkey Foundation to launch Global Student Prize, an annual $100,000 award for exceptional students worldwide who make a significant impact on learning, their peers, and society.[83][84]
Chegg sponsors music instruction contests for colleges through its Music 101 program, which include live classroom instruction by notable musicians and a $10,000 grant from the David B. Goldberg Music Scholarship fund for the winning school music department. Events have featured Yungblud, U2, Imagine Dragons, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Shawn Mendes, Steve Aoki, and Liam Payne.[85][86]
Remove ads
Awards and recognition
In 2021, Chegg was declared the "most valuable edtech company in America" by Forbes.[5]
In 2022, Chegg was ranked 20th on the list of "Best Small and Medium Workplaces for Women" by Fortune.[87]
See also
References
External links
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads