2014 CNBC Disruptor 50

What
A non-profit online education venture, funded by Harvard and MIT, with an initial investment of $30 million from each institution

Disrupting
The traditional higher-education model through MOOCs and interactive online classes in subjects such as law, history, science, engineering, business, social sciences, computer science, public health and artificial intelligence (AI)  

• Recently signed deal to power China's largest online learning portal, XuetangX.
  
• Tsinghua University joined edX's xConsortium in May 2013, becoming the first university in Mainland China to create online courses—"History of Chinese Architecture" and "Principles of Electric Circuits." 
  
• Expanded beyond straight-to-consumer model comparable to Udacity and Coursera fee-based certification programs, with its Open edX program, launched in September.
• Open edX's first customers are national education systems in China and France.
• Contracted with the International Monetary Fund to administer training courses in macroeconomics and finance to governments and the public. 
  
• Recently launched its XSeries of massive open online courses, designed to move MOOCs beyond single course design to integrated plan: equivalent to two to four traditional residential courses that take from six months to two years to complete.
• First XSeries courses are "Foundations of Computer Science" (undergraduate level) and "Supply Chain and Logistics Management" (graduate level).
  
• New ID verification process uses webcam photos to confirm student identity; provides linkable online certificates for a fee. 
• Piloting ID verification on three standalone courses: "Circuits and Electronics" from MITx; "Software as a Service" and "Intro to Statistics: Descriptive Statistics" from BerkeleyX.
  
• Recently partnered with Stanford and its Class2Go platform to develop open source code version of edX platform, dubbed the "Linux of Learning."

Headquarters: Cambridge, Mass.
President: Anant Agarwal 
Year Founded: 2012
Number of Employees: 65
Funding: Harvard and MIT
Key Partners: University of CA Berkeley, University of Texas, McGill, Australian National University, Wellesley College, Georgetown University, University of Toronto, Ecole PolyTechnique Federale de Lausanne, TU Delft, Rice University, University of Western Australia, University of Queensland, and Tsinghua University