| Canvas | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Instructure |
| Written in | Ruby on Rails |
| License | Core AGPLv3, Some official plugins proprietary[3] |
| Website | https://www.instructure.com/canvas |
Instructure Holdings, Inc. is an educational technology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is the developer and publisher of Canvas, a web-based learning management system (LMS).
The company was founded in 2008 by two BYU graduate students, Brian Whitmer and Devlin Daley.[4] Its initial funding came from Mozy founder Josh Coates, who served as Instructure's CEO from 2010 to 2018 and chairman of the board through 2020.[5]
In December 2010, the Utah Education Network (UEN), a representative of a number of Utah colleges and universities, announced that Instructure would be replacing Blackboard.[6] By 2013, the company's customer base had increased to 9 million users.[7]
In 2011, Instructure launched Canvas, a learning management system.[8] The company announced that Canvas would be made freely available under an Affero General Public License (AGPL) license as open-source software.[9][10][11] As of 2025, the core of Canvas was AGPL-licensed and installable, but several commonly-used Infrastructure-plugins were proprietary, making Canvas open-core.[12] Canvas became available on iOS in 2011, and on Android in 2013.[13] As of 2020, Canvas was used in approximately 4,000 institutions worldwide.[14]
In 2015, Instructure launched Bridge, a cloud-based corporate learning management system.[15] It was acquired by Learning Technologies Group (LTG) in 2021.[16]
As of 2015, the company had raised $90 million in funding from investors.[17] On November 13, 2015, the firm began trading as a publicly held company on the New York Stock Exchange.[18]
In 2017, the company acquired Philadelphia based video learning startup Practice XYZ, formerly known as ApprenNet and merged the offerings into its own products.[19][20]
In 2020, Thoma Bravo acquired the company for $2 billion.[21] In June 2021, Instructure again filed for an IPO,[22] and began trading under the symbol INST.[23]
In 2024, it was announced that KKR and Dragoneer had completed their purchase of the company for $4.8 billion.[24]
In 2024, Instructure announced the acquisition of Parchment, a credential management platform.[25]
On July 23, 2025, OpenAI and Instructure announced a global partnership to bring AI tools inside the Canvas LMS. [26]
