Khan Academy started with a finance worker tutoring his cousin online
In 2004 Sal Khan, then working in finance, began helping a young cousin with maths over the internet. Other relatives wanted lessons too, so he recorded short videos on his home computer and posted them to YouTube. Four years later he quit his job and turned the hobby into a free, nonprofit school for the world.
The early tutorials were homemade: Khan sketched on a digital drawing tablet using simple painting programs while talking through each step. That style survived. Lessons still look like a teacher drawing on an electronic blackboard and explaining every stroke, paired with practice exercises, progress tracking and badges. Material now runs from kindergarten through high school and into test preparation for exams such as the SAT, MCAT and LSAT.
The idea behind it is self-paced mastery. Students can rewatch until a concept clicks, and teachers can 'flip' the classroom, assigning videos as homework and spending class time on individual help. Khan has been candid about the limits, saying in 2016 that the videos are valuable but never a complete education. Critics pointed out that he had no formal teaching background and questioned some maths and physics explanations, and the organisation responded by correcting errors and building a network of more than 200 content experts.
Money comes mostly from philanthropy. Google gave $2 million in 2010 for new courses and translations, AT&T funded mobile versions, and the Gates Foundation has contributed more than $10 million. Revenue was $31 million in 2018. Volunteers have produced nearly 20,000 subtitle translations, and offline copies of the videos have reached rural areas in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Students who spend at least 20 hours on its SAT practice reportedly gain 115 points on average.
The newest chapter involves artificial intelligence. Khanmigo, a tutoring chatbot initially built on OpenAI's GPT-4, launched in March 2023, followed by a writing coach and free tools for teachers made with Microsoft. It has stumbled too: in 2024 a Wall Street Journal reporter found it making basic arithmetic mistakes.
Source: Khan Academy
