Running with Giants: As AI Labs Double Down on Education, Where Can EdTech Startups

Google has been rapidly expanding its education product suite—embedding AI across Classroom, launching NotebookLM, and deepening its presence in K-12 infrastructure. Meanwhile, Microsoft, Anthropic, and OpenAI are building out their own education workflows, making learning tools increasingly free, bundled, and ubiquitous. But frontier labs aren't just competitors—they're also enabling startups to build faster and smarter than ever. So what types of EdTech companies can thrive in this landscape? Investors and operators will dig into where traditional business models are under pressure, where startups can carve out durable positions, and how founders should think about building in the age of platform giants.