Coursera backs Andrew Ng's new AI startup with $100m

This article was published on July 28, 2026 Andrew Ng's LearnVector wants AI agents to tutor white-collar workers one-on-one. Coursera, which he co-founded and still chairs, is funding it with $100m for a third of the company. Coursera Chairman Andrew Ng and CEO Greg Hart Andrew Ng helped give the AI industry its vocabulary, from “AI is the new electricity” to “agentic AI.” His new company bets against the phrase everyone else is using: that AI will take your job. Ng has founded LearnVector, an AI-native learning startup, and Coursera is backing it with $100m, first reported by Axios. The plan is AI agents that act as personal tutors. They adapt to each learner and drill with them until the learner can prove they have mastered a skill. The premise rejects the layoffs narrative outright. Amazon, Meta and Block have all pinned recent job cuts partly on AI. Ng thinks that framing is wrong. “Conventional wisdom holds that AI will replace people, and I believe in the opposite,” Ng told Reuters. AI will make workers more productive and create fresh demand for skills, he argues, rather than a “job apocalypse.” The $100m gives Coursera roughly a one-third stake in LearnVector. That implies