TAL Education Group

TAL Education Group is a Chinese education company that was among the major players in the K12 online education sector before regulatory upheaval. In the first half of 2021 alone, the K12 track attracted historical total funding of 141 billion yuan; a year later that figure had collapsed to just 2.4766 billion yuan, and TAL—alongside peers like Yuanfudao and Zuoyebang—was forced to spin off its core business after new rules barred for-profit tutoring firms from distributing dividends or going public . The company has since served as a talent source for AI entrepreneurs: Yang Songfan, who later founded FaceThink and then Kai Kai Huacai (backed by Sequoia and ZhenFund), previously led TAL's AI Engineering Institute ; another founder, Lin Zhihang of KernelCAT, also started his career there .