Onion Academy

About Onion Academy

Onion Academy, founded in 2013 by Yang Linfeng, Zhu Ruochen, and Li Nuo, is an educational technology company headquartered in Beijing, China. Initially launched as Onion Math, the company rebranded in December 2019 to reflect its expansion into a multi-subject platform. The founders, including Harvard graduate Yang Linfeng and Duke University graduate Zhu Ruochen, aimed to address educational disparities by leveraging technology to create engaging learning experiences. This mission was partly inspired by Yang's experience volunteering at rural schools, which highlighted the potential for human-computer interaction to deliver quality education at a low cost.

The company provides a comprehensive intelligent education platform for K-12 students, families, and schools, driven by artificial intelligence and big data. Its core offering consists of thousands of short, animated video courses, typically 5-8 minutes long, each designed to explain a single knowledge point in subjects like math, physics, chemistry, Chinese, and English. These videos are supplemented with interactive exercises to reinforce learning and create a gamified experience. This human-computer interaction model, which avoids live-teacher instruction, is central to its strategy.

Onion Academy operates on a B2C and B2G (business-to-government/school) model. For individual users (C-end), it offers its app with course content, which constitutes about 80% of its revenue, often through subscriptions. For schools and teachers (G-end), it provides a suite of teaching and research solutions, including classroom resources and management tools that support a blended learning or flipped classroom approach. The company has also expanded into physical products with the Onion Planet Learning Machine. The platform is used by over 100 million students and millions of teachers across China.

Onion Academy has successfully raised significant capital over multiple funding rounds from investors including Tencent Investment, Primavera Capital Group, Legend Capital, and Kunlun Wanwei. The company has received numerous accolades, being named one of Forbes China's 50 most innovative companies. It also runs a public welfare project, "Onion Assistant Teacher Action," providing free resources to schools in underdeveloped areas.