Top U.S. Edtech Summit Merging With U.K. Trade Show Giant

Forbes

3 days ago

Founded in 2010, the ASU+GSV Summit hosted 15,000 attendees this spring. ASU+GSV Summit
The ASU+GSV Summit, one of the largest education conferences in the United States, was acquired by the U.K.-based event organizer Hyve Group, and is combining forces with Hyve's Bett, a series of global education trade shows and events, GSV and Bett announced today. Bett, founded in 1985, is best known for its namesake British Educational Training and Technology Show and hosts annual events in London, São Paulo, and Asia that draw more than 90,000 attendees.
'It really is the main event of its kind, but it is a trade fair. So teachers will come, edtech companies will come to promote their solutions to the education market. It's really buying and selling,' Hyve CEO Mark Shashoua says about the annual Bett show. 'Whereas ASU+GSV, it's the largest C-suite summit in the world for edtech bar none.'
The GSV Summit—referred to often as the 'Davos of Education'—has quickly established itself as a must-attend event for education entrepreneurs, investors and policymakers since its inaugural summit in 2010. With long-time cosponsor Arizona State University, the ASU+GSV Summit and its fledgling AI Show drew 15,000 attendees this past spring, up from 10,000 in 2024 and 6,300 in 2023, says Michael Moe, founder and CEO of GSV, a venture capital firm focused on the education and workforce skills market. The conference routinely features big names—past speakers include Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, Bill Gates, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Sam Altman, Sheryl Sandberg, Magic Johnson, Jane Fonda and Matthew McConaughey. Six U.S. secretaries of education—Linda McMahon, Miguel Cardona, Betsy DeVos, Arne Duncan, John King Jr., and Margaret Spellings—have spoken at the event.
'One of the reasons why the summit has worked is because it isn't an investment conference,' Moe says. 'It is a kind of strange cocktail mix of different constituents that all have different backgrounds and come at this from different angles, but come together because they want to be connected to innovation and education technology and that kind of broader mission.' About a fifth of attendees are in the investment business, he adds.
Hyve has plans to replicate the summit in Europe, and maybe Asia depending on customer demand, Shashoua says. They also plan to, in some form, bring the trade show stateside.
Moe co-founded the GSV Summit with GSV managing partner Deborah Quazzo, and both will remain involved in the summit after the merger. 'We wouldn't be doing this if we were saying 'Here are the keys and go,'' says Moe. Hyve Group plans to retain the 40 full-time employees that work on the annual event, and the team will now report to Duncan Verry, Bett portfolio director at Hyve. Moe declined to share the financial terms of the deal, but noted that GSV 'will retain interest in the combination,' and that Arizona State University will remain a named partner for the annual summit in San Diego.
The deal was 10 years in the making, says Moe. 'Deborah and I met Mark [Shashoua] in 2014, and at that time we were really just understanding there were partnership opportunities with Bett because it had this great international franchise,' he says. 'We stayed in touch with them over the years and they've come to the summit, we've gone to Bett, and then just over a year ago … after the summit they came to us and said 'We'd really like to have a conversation about coming together.'' More From Forbes Forbes These 26 Rich Private Colleges Just Got A Tax Cut From Republicans By Emma Whitford Forbes Trump's Attack On Research Funding Hurt Your State University, Too By Emma Whitford Forbes As Harvard Struggles, For-Profit Colleges Are Poised To Flourish Under Trump By Emma Whitford