The stock price of Stride, a small edtech company, has plummeted. The reason is Anthropic

Shares of Stride, a mid-cap developer of a technology-based educational platform, plummeted 5.6% on July 14. This came after Anthropic announced the launch of the Claude for Teachers program, which provides teachers with free access to Claude’s premium features, including educational tools.

Stride shares fell 5.6% to $86.9 on July 14 on the New York Stock Exchange. On Tuesday, Anthropic announced the launch of a free program called Claude for Teachers, which allows elementary and secondary school teachers to plan lessons, create tests, and access academic resources.

This directly affects Stride’s business and is raising market concerns about its competitiveness, according to Wall Street Insights. Given recent technical issues that have led to a high churn rate among Stride users, schools may seek alternative platforms, which would weaken the company’s market position, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Nicole D’Souza told the publication. However, she believes it is still too early to tell whether Claude for Teachers will be able to replace Stride and similar products.

Stride has been plagued by setbacks recently. A month ago, on June 15, the company lost a contract with a school district in Texas, causing its stock price to drop 14.5% in a single day.

A year earlier, a school district in New Mexico terminated its contract with the company, citing Stride’s serious violations of regulations, including a breach of state law regarding student-to-teacher ratios. The district believes the company may have misrepresented this information in other jurisdictions as well, thereby generating hundreds of millions more in revenue.

School districts contribute significantly to Stride’s revenue, as the company offers an alternative to traditional education in the form of state-funded virtual schools, according to the GuruFocus website. In its latest financial report, the company did not specify what percentage of its revenue comes from government contracts. Overall, revenue for the fiscal quarter ending March 31 rose 2.7% year-over-year to $629.9 million, while net income fell by nearly 11% to $88.5 million.

Another challenge stemmed from technical issues caused by the rollout of platform updates in mid-2025, which prevented the company from registering 10,000–15,000 customers. The day after this news broke, Stride’s stock price plummeted by 54%. Following this, several Wall Street analysts downgraded their recommendations or lowered their price targets for the company’s stock.

However, most analysts remain optimistic about the company’s prospects: its stock has four “buy” ratings, one “hold,” and no “sell” recommendations. The average target price is $121.2, which is 39.5% higher than the most recent closing price.