3 EdTech stocks on my October watchlist: $RYET scaling AI labs, $COUR at $1.2B+ guidance, and $LRN with 244K students. Missing anything?

With the new academic year getting underway in September and October, I look more closely at education-tech names again. My 3 picks $RYET, $COUR and $LRN give exposure to three very different pieces of the same broader market: campus AI and infrastructure, online skills training, and full-service digital education.

$RYET is easily the smallest and most of the three, but that is also why the scaling math interests me. FY2026 revenue was about $7.48M, up 11.9% YoY, with campus operations contributing $5.72M, or 76.4% of total revenue. Smart Campus also reported about $9.49M of cumulative operating revenue from its September 2025 launch through May 2026, including $3.83M in April and May alone, although those latter figures were unaudited management-account numbers rather than GAAP revenue.

The newer AI layer is what makes RYET more interesting to me this year. Its first major YeeZo deployment is worth roughly $880K and covers 10 AI training labs and 610 workstations. Against only $7.48M of FY2026 revenue, one contract of that size is already meaningful. If future deployments were similar, five would equal about $4.4M and ten about $8.8M in contract value. The September/October academic cycle is also naturally relevant for a company selling campus operations, training infrastructure and university AI tools, although the timing of actual revenue recognition will depend on deployments and contracts.

$COUR is the scale platform in the group. Coursera generated $299M of Q2 2026 revenue and raised full-year guidance to $1.220B-$1.245B following its combination with Udemy. Earlier in the year it had already reached 205M registered learners, added a record 7.6M new learners in Q1, and had 1,729 paid enterprise customers. The company also committed $100M to LearnVector, Andrew Ng’s new AI-native learning company, which gives COUR a direct AI-skills angle rather than relying only on traditional online courses.

What I like about COUR into the fall is the mix. It has consumer learners, enterprise customers and universities all using the same broad skills platform, while AI is creating a constant need for workers to retrain. Back-to-school season can help engagement, but COUR is less dependent on the traditional academic calendar than RYET or LRN because enterprise learning and professional upskilling run year-round.

$LRN is the more mature operating business of the three. Stride generated $2.518B of FY2026 revenue versus $2.405B the year before, while net income reached $338.2M. Average enrollment was 243.9K students, upwards 4.2%, and Career Learning enrollment grew much faster at 13.9% to 109.7K. Revenue per enrollment also increased 2.4% to $9,914.

The fall quarter is especially relevant for LRN because its business is directly tied to school enrollment. That makes September and October an important period for seeing how many students enter its full-service programs for the new academic year. The growth in Career Learning is the number I would watch closely because it has been outpacing total enrollment growth and gives Stride exposure to vocational and workforce education alongside traditional K-12.

That is why I like looking at all three together. $LRN is already doing more than $2.5B annually and gives the established digital-school exposure. $COUR is guiding for more than $1.2B and sits directly in the global online-skills and AI-training market. $RYET is only at $7.48M of FY2026 revenue, but that tiny starting base means an $880K AI deployment or a few additional university wins can move the numbers much faster.

What makes my small basket interesting (as for me) is these are on Same broad education-tech theme, but completely different stages of the growth curve.

My research, not investment advice. Do your own research and never trade emotionally