Australian e-learning provider Go1 buys Berlin start-up

2023-05-08 14:30:00

Blinkist-App

The Berlin start-up is known for its summaries of non-fiction books.

(Photo: Blinkist)

Frankfurt The Berlin start-up Blinkist, which specializes in book summaries, is getting a new owner. The Australian e-learning company Go1 takes over the company, as the companies announced on Monday. Neither side gave any information about the purchase price.

According to people familiar with the matter, Blinkist is valued at around four times its revenue on the deal. This corresponds to around 200 million euros.

Blinkist has over 5,500 non-fiction book summaries that paid subscription users can read or listen to. The company is to form a new division of Go1 in the future, which has so far been geared towards digital training offers for companies.

The Blinkist brand should be retained

The Go1, which is geared towards corporate customers, gets access to the German-speaking area for the first time through the acquisition. The Blinkist brand is to be retained and the range continuously expanded. Blinkist founder Holger Seim becomes the new division’s chief operating officer (COO).

Go1 offers digital education and training. Eight million users in 60 countries can access a library of 80,000 courses. Investors include Softbank, Seek and M12, Microsoft’s venture capital arm.

“The merger creates new opportunities, which creates a real market leader in the field of e-learning,” said Seim to the Handelsblatt. The shops complemented each other well, layoffs are not planned. Blinkist has 170 employees, Go1 around 500. “This is not an emergency sale. Blinkist has been cash flow positive for the past three years,” says Seim.

Of the venture capitalists who have provided growth capital to Blinkist, many are swapping a large portion of their Blinkist shares for Go1 shares. According to financial circles, no one is selling completely. However, some of the smaller investors let themselves be paid more in cash than in shares, which is also related to tax reasons.

AI should not replace man-made summaries

Blinkist expects sales of around EUR 50 million and a positive cash flow for the current year. Blinkist continues to rely on man-made summaries – so-called “Blinks” – of non-fiction books from areas such as business, careers, society and natural sciences.

Artificial intelligence (AI) could also be used in the future, says Seim. They are already experimenting with GPT-4, the language model behind ChatGPT, and will soon be able to integrate it into the production process on a larger scale. “But it’s not yet part of our standard process,” says Seim. “So far, people have not been substitutable for the production of a high-quality summary of a non-fiction book.”

The selection of the relevant books and the recording of the mostly 15-minute audio files cannot yet be outsourced to AI. “Text-to-speech is pretty good, but it’s still not good enough for a podcast that you enjoy listening to,” says Seim.

More: How AI tools can make work easier