How Sparkli uses AI to improve children’s learning

“If your child wanted to know more about Mars 30 years ago, you would have given them a book; more recently, you might suggest watching a video,” says Lax Poojary, CEO and co-founder of Swiss educational technology (EdTech) startup Sparkli. “Today children should be able to explore Mars themselves.”

To be clear: Sparkli, which today announces that it has raised $5 million in pre-funding, is not proposing to send young people on space missions. Sparkli describes itself as a “multimodal, AI-native learning machine”; In simpler English, it uses artificial intelligence to give children the opportunity to explore their ideas and promote their learning through engaging and inspiring digital experiences.

Poojary and co-founders Mynseok Kang and Luci Marchand met at Google, where they worked across a number of divisions, including YouTube. The latter sparked her interest in videos…