Large Tech corporations and upcoming startups wish to use generative AI to construct software program and {hardware} for youths. Lots of these experiences are restricted to textual content or voice, and children may not discover that charming. Three former Google workers wish to recover from that hurdle with their generative AI-powered interactive app, Sparkli.
Sparkli was based final 12 months by Lax Poojary, Lucie Marchand, and Myn Kang. As mother and father, Poojary and Kang weren’t capable of fulfill their kids’s curiosity or give partaking solutions to their questions.
“Youngsters, by definition, are very curious, and my son would ask me questions on how vehicles work or the way it rains. My method was to make use of ChatGPT or Gemini to elucidate these ideas to a six-year-old, however that’s nonetheless a wall of textual content. What children need is an interactive expertise. This was our core course of behind founding Sparkli,” Poojary instructed Trendster over a name.
Previous to launching Sparkli, Poojary and Kang co-founded a journey aggregator referred to as Touring Chook and a video-focused social commerce app, Shoploop, at Google’s Space 120, the corporate’s inside startup incubator. Poojary later went on to work at Google and YouTube on purchasing. Marchand, who’s the CTO of Sparkli, was additionally one of many co-founders of Shoploop and later labored at Google.
“When a child requested what Mars seems like fifty years in the past, we would have proven them an image,” mentioned Poojary. “Ten years in the past, we would have proven them a video. With Sparkli, we would like children to work together and expertise what Mars is like.”
The startup mentioned that schooling methods typically fall behind in instructing fashionable ideas. Sparkli needs to show children about matters like expertise design, monetary literacy, and entrepreneurship by creating an AI-powered studying “expedition.”
The app lets customers discover some predefined matters in numerous classes or ask their very own inquiries to create a studying path. The app additionally highlights one new subject day by day to let children be taught one thing new. Youngsters can both hearken to the generated voice or learn the textual content. Chapters beneath one subject embody a mixture of audio, video, photographs, quizzes, and video games. The app additionally creates choose-as-you-go adventures that don’t create the strain of getting questions proper or incorrect.
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Poojary talked about that the startup makes use of generative AI to create all of its media property on the fly. The corporate can create a studying expertise inside two minutes of a person asking a query, and it’s making an attempt to cut back this time additional.
The startup talked about that whereas AI assistants might help kids be taught sure matters, their focus shouldn’t be on schooling. It mentioned that to make its product efficient, the primary two hires have been a PhD holder in academic science and AI and a trainer. This was a aware resolution to make sure its content material higher serves kids, protecting ideas of pedagogy in thoughts.
One of many key issues round children utilizing AI is security. Firms like OpenAI and Character.ai are dealing with lawsuits from mother and father who allege that these instruments inspired their kids to self-harm. Sparkli mentioned that whereas sure matters like sexual content material are utterly banned on the app, when a baby asks about matters like self-harm, the app tries to show them about emotional intelligence and encourages them to speak to their mother and father.
The corporate is piloting its app with an institute that has a community of colleges with over 100,000 college students. At present, its audience is kids aged 5-12, and it examined its product in over 20 colleges final 12 months.
Sparkli has additionally constructed a trainer module that permits academics to trace progress and assign homework to children. The corporate mentioned that it was impressed by Duolingo to make the app partaking sufficient that youngsters can be taught ideas and in addition really feel like coming again to the app incessantly. The app has streaks and rewards for youths for finishing classes frequently. It additionally offers children quest playing cards, primarily based on the preliminary avatar they’ve arrange, for studying completely different matters.
“We have now seen a really optimistic response from our faculty pilots. Academics typically use Sparkli to create expeditions that youngsters can discover in the beginning of the category and lead them right into a extra discussion-based format. Some academics additionally used it to create [homework] after they clarify a subject to let children discover additional and get a measure of their understanding,” Poojary mentioned.
Whereas the startup needs to primarily work with colleges globally for the following few months, it needs to open up client entry and let mother and father obtain the app by mid-2026.
The corporate has raised $5 million in pre-seed funding led by Swiss enterprise agency Founderful. Sparkli is Founderful’s first pure-play edtech funding. The agency’s founding accomplice, Lukas Weder, mentioned that the workforce’s technical ability and market alternative nudged him to put money into the startup.
“As a father of two children who’re in class now, I see them studying attention-grabbing stuff, however they don’t be taught matters like monetary literacy or innovation in expertise. I assumed from a product viewpoint, Sparkli will get them away from video video games and lets them be taught stuff in an immersive manner,” Weder mentioned.
This publish was first printed on January 22, 2026.
