Infobase Named to TIME's World's Top EdTech Companies of 2026
NEW YORK, July 27, 2026 — Infobase today announced it has been named to TIME’s World’s Top EdTech Companies of 2026, produced in partnership with Statista. The list scored more than 6,500 education technology companies worldwide on financial strength and industry impact, and recognized the top 500. Infobase ranked in the top half globally.
“Being named among TIME’s top EdTech companies, on a global stage, is meaningful — but what matters more is what it represents. It tells us that developing information-literate learners isn’t a niche concern; it’s recognized worldwide as an essential need. We’re at an inflection point. Information literacy has never mattered more, and the urgency has never been greater. We see our responsibility as a company to meet that demand everywhere it exists.” — Bill Rieders, Chief Executive Officer, Infobase
Infobase and Its Role Supporting Information Literacy
TIME opens its coverage of the list on an optimistic note, citing a 2025 UNESCO report that shows global literacy rates climbing steadily over the past decade. However, read past the opening line and UNESCO’s own report gets more cautious. Progress is uneven. Gaps persist for women, older adults, and marginalized populations. There’s also a more basic problem with the definition of literacy. UNESCO measures reading and writing, and admits its statistics “do not include the numeracy and specific literacy skills required in digital societies.”
While basic literacy skills of reading and writing are getting better, knowing what to do with the information read is a different skill that is under pressure. Generative AI makes information cheap to produce and hard to verify. And the sheer volume of content people now have to sort through– students, patrons, and professionals alike– has outgrown what anyone can vet by hand. Information literacy is a basic requirement for school, work, and civic life, applying to nearly every part of it, but those foundational skills still tend to start in one place: the library.
“Libraries have always been the infrastructure of human knowledge — ensuring that those who need it can find it, evaluate it, and use it wisely. That mission hasn’t changed, and Infobase has been proud to support this work for 85 years,” Rieders said. “Every university, school district and library system that has stayed with us for decades, demonstrates that this mission is worth continuing.”
How TIME and Statista Determined the World’s Top EdTech Companies of 2026
TIME and Statista built the list by scoring companies on two factors: financial strength and industry impact. Statista gathered data through desk research, direct submissions from companies, and its own data partnerships, then scored each company against those two dimensions to arrive at a final ranking. In total, Statista evaluated more than 6,500 companies worldwide.
The list of the World’s Top EdTech Companies draws from a broad cross-section of the sector: consumer learning apps, adaptive tutoring platforms, workforce training software, and K-12 curriculum providers, among others. Within that field, library-facing companies are a small minority — Infobase is one of the only two companies on the list built specifically to serve libraries. Of the two, Infobase is the only one organized specifically around information literacy: not just providing access to content, but building the skills to evaluate and use it, across K-12, higher education, public libraries, and the workplace.
About Infobase
Infobase is an information literacy solutions provider serving K–12 schools and districts, colleges and universities, public libraries, and employers. Through an integrated suite of databases, streaming video, eBook collections, and educator tools, Infobase helps students, patrons, and professionals build the durable skills needed to discover, evaluate, and apply knowledge with confidence. Eighty-five years of editorial excellence inform trusted brands — including Facts on File, Learn360, Credo Reference, Films on Demand, The Mailbox®, The World Almanac, Vault, and Bloom’s — through modern, curriculum-aligned platforms. For more information, visit infobase.com.
