The pandemic maketh Chegg. The pandemic taketh away. AI just finished the job

“Have you seen Chegg’s price recently?” the edtech executive asked as he took his seat.

We were meeting for breakfast at a Third Wave Coffee outlet in Bengaluru’s Bellandur neighbourhood. The date was 23 November 2021.

“I haven’t,” I replied. 

The stock had crashed more than 50% in November alone, he showed me on his iPhone. It had closed the previous day at $26.50. Absurd, given that the same stock had been galloping earlier that year, blowing past the $100 mark and hitting a peak of $113 in February, valuing the company at roughly $12–14 billion. Then came the free fall.