Kno Gets $46M For Tablet-Based Digital Textbook «

Kno Gets $46M For Tablet-Based Digital Textbook

Kno, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup that plans to launch a two-screen “digital textbook” later this year, today announced that it has raised a $46-million financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Silicon Valley Bank and TriplePoint Capital also participating in the debt and equity funding. The latest cash infusion brings the total raised by the company to $55 million, which the company says should provide enough resources to get its tablet to market by the end of this year.

This is Kno founder Osman Rashid’s second crack at revolutionizing the textbook market: He’s also the founder and former CEO of Chegg, a startup that rents access to university textbooks. Kno is a much more ambitious project, however, since it involves launching a new hardware device and a software platform at the same time. The Kno — which runs a version of Linux and uses the Chrome browser as its interface — is designed to replicate the printed textbook, but also allows users to write notes on the screen and search through the text. The company has a beta trial underway with several textbook publishers, including McGraw-Hill and Wiley.

Looks to be a hefty beast and likely too large.