Today we are pleased to share that the LEGO Foundation and members of the Walton family have joined together as anchor investors of A-Street’s Fund II. Their collective $675M in fund commitments and strategic co-investment capacity marks a critical moment in A-Street’s journey. We are grateful for this opportunity for partnership, for this expression of confidence in our theory of change and team, and for the shared enthusiasm for our investment approach at such a critical moment for schools and school systems.
We can hardly imagine a better set of partners for A-Street and our portfolio companies than LEGO and members of the Walton family. We believe A-Street’s investor community represents the premier constellation of partners committed to advancing student-centered solutions that deliver on outcomes.
As proud as we are about the accomplishments of Fund I, and as excited as we are about what lies ahead in Fund II, we know we are just at the beginning. When we look across our portfolio, we see the green shoots of progress. Yet when we visit classrooms, all too often we see that instructional practice looks much as it did a decade or two ago. We see educators striving for something elusive. And we see students ready to be challenged.
Hence our delight at partnering with the LEGO Foundation. For decades, LEGO has personified the joys of learning and the power of curiosity. The allure of LEGO’s product is as timeless as it is irresistible. Again and again, LEGO has centered all of us — our families, our children, our students, ourselves — on the sacred task of discovery, of building from the ground up, of trying and failing and trying again. These are the very attributes we and anyone who cares about the future of learning need now more than ever. These are the qualities that must guide the development of the next generation of learning solutions.
If A-Street’s first five years were a time of enormous uncertainty for schools and school systems, we can be sure that the next five years will bring even greater change. The parade of challenges are in full view: enrollment declines, budget uncertainties, and most importantly student performance trailing pre-pandemic levels.
This comes against the backdrop of the explosion of artificial intelligence, with all of its promise and peril. When A-Street launched just five years ago, AI was not yet in the mainstream. Given the immensity of the challenges at hand and all that is at stake, we can’t help but see promise in this moment. Yet we know, despite a clear mandate for change, schools and school systems remain a doggedly tough terrain for innovation, especially as educators and schools grapple with an overload of disconnected technologies that tax our attention and prove difficult to manage.
A-Street’s goal remains to invest and help to build companies that understand these tensions and can sort through the noise to build solutions that win on outcomes. Grounded in what we’ve learned from our Fund I portfolio companies, we believe more than ever in our theory of change. We envision a reinvigorated educator, empowered and supported to execute a more effective pedagogy that results in improved learning outcomes. We will back solutions that leverage the immense promise of a new technology while enhancing the humanity of classrooms, schools and learning. These solutions must be as effective as they are elegant. They must make the teacher’s job easier and more sustainable, enabling educators to move students to proficiency and beyond. Most importantly, these solutions must earn the trust of teachers and of the classroom’s many constituents by delivering on outcomes.
We know that the continued work of charting new ground in our second fund won’t always come easy. Designing a next generation of solutions will require patience, boldness, and partnership. We are honored to work side-by-side with our investors, new and old, and a remarkable collection of CEOs and teams to advance a next generation of high quality, coherent solutions that our nation’s students need and deserve.
