Rosetta Stone Inc (RST) Bolsters Learning Technologies with Acquisitions of Livemocha and Lexia Learning

September 9, 2013

Rosetta Stone Inc (RST) is moving to the broad area of learning through technology by adding over 16 million language learners with the acquisition of Livemocha, and by increasing its Enterprise & Education business to over $80 million in gross annual sales with the acquisition of Lexia Learning, says Stephen Swad, President and Chief Executive Officer of Rosetta Stone Inc.

“[Livemocha] has a state-of-the-art, robust and extensible learning platform. That platform was something that we were in the midst of building, and we saw it nearly complete at Livemocha. Purchasing the company accelerated us by about 12 months toward that end destination of having a flexible learning platform. And the second reason we bought it is Livemocha has an extremely largely community of language learners that totals over 16 million — one of the world’s largest language learning communities — and we thought that would be a nice complement to the suite of products and services Rosetta Stone owns,” Swad said.

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The acquisition of Lexia Learning then extended RST beyond language learning to the the broader area of learning through the use of technology, Swad says, and bolstered the company’s Enterprise & Education business to over $80 million in gross annual sales.

Lexia is a reading technology company, and I believe reading represents a tight adjacency to language learning and a natural place to take Rosetta Stone as we extend into new categories of learning,” Swad said. “I was very attracted to the technology that Lexia deploys, which enables children to read using technology. Lexia provides a great assistance to teachers to help flag where students need help, something that is sorely needed in our K-12 environment. They also have patent-pending technology called Assessment Without Testing, by which they can predict the outcomes of students without testing, saving classroom time and enabling the student and the teacher to be more productive. So the technology also was very appealing to us.”