In 2004 Sal Khan was working in finance when he began tutoring a younger cousin in math over the internet, sketching problems with Yahoo’s online drawing tool while they talked by phone. As more relatives asked for help, he began pre-recording lessons with software like SmoothDraw and ArtRage and a Wacom tablet, and in 2006 he started posting them to YouTube. Strangers found the videos by the thousands, USA Today featured him, and in 2008, at the onset of the financial crisis, he quit his job and set up Khan Academy as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. His faceless videos of colored digital ink on a black background promoted mastery learning, where software required full comprehension of a skill before unlocking the next, and the flipped classroom.
Big donors followed: Google gave $2 million in 2010, the Gates Foundation more than $10 million, Carlos Slim funded Spanish translation, AT&T paid for mobile apps, and Elon Musk later gave $5 million. Between 2012 and 2016 critics noted that Khan had no teaching background and found technical errors in early math and physics videos, so the organization corrected them and built a network of more than 200 content experts. In 2014 he opened the Khan Lab School in Mountain View, California. In 2023 the nonprofit launched Khanmigo, a tutor powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, and in 2024 a Wall Street Journal reporter found it making basic calculation errors.
- Khan Academy partnered with Pixar on Pixar in a Box, a course on how school skills apply to animation.
- In 2015 it became the College Board’s official SAT practice partner, and in 2018 it launched Khan Academy Kids for ages two to seven.
- Khanmigo first cost $4 a month in a pilot across dozens of school districts and added a writing coach by November 2023.
- On 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper tested the writing coach on essays he had written in middle school.
- Khan received the Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation in 2019.
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