Sparkli is an exciting new educational nonprofit startup that was founded in 2022. Co-founded by Lax Poojary, Lucie Marchand, and Myn Kang, it uses their new AI-powered app to transform how kids learn and express themselves. In 2022, the company raised $5 million in pre-seed funding. The investment from Swiss venture firm Founderful will allow the growing company to refine and grow its services. Sparkli’s app is aimed at children 5-12 years old. It employs generative AI to allow young learners to explore interactive, imaginative learning experiences that ignite their curiosity and creativity.
The app really shines when it comes to providing a customized learning experience. It’s this highly personalized content that users get delivered in under two minutes from asking a question. Sparkli’s founders built the app to feature an independent, great new topic each day. This method gives kids the opportunity to find, taste and learn something new every week. Poojary’s original idea was to create a more immersive and engaging learning format. He continued, “Children are naturally curious … My son always just likes to ask me questions of like how a car works or why it rains. So I resolved to try using ChatGPT or Gemini to explain these things at the level of a six-year-old. Even then, the output still came across as a wall of text. What kids want is an interactive experience. Even if it got us in!
This was our guiding principle through creating Sparkli.
Over the next few months, the founders intend to build Sparkli first and foremost inside schools around the world. They’re doing this because they know that by embedding their technology into the classroom, they can complement and increase students’ experiences substantially. We’ve had an overwhelmingly positive reaction from our school pilots. Teachers often use Sparkli to create expeditions that kids can explore at the start of the class and lead them into a more discussion-based format,” Poojary shared. He illustrated how some teachers have begun to use the app to assign post-lesson homework after they’ve explained a topic. Through this alternative method, students can experiment more freely and evaluate their learning.
Sparkli’s commitment to education goes further than one might expect. It creatively embeds critical knowledge and skills like financial literacy and innovation in technology. Weder continued, “It’s my dream that children take their first steps in new and important fields.” As a dad of two kids who are in school now, I watch them learn really cool things—they’re learning amazing things—but they’re not learning things like financial literacy, how to be an innovator in technology. From a product standpoint, I’m thrilled that Sparkli provides a fun, dynamic alternative to video games. It awakens the creator in everyone and gets them hooked on heroic learning adventures.
Beyond developing a powerful tech platform, Sparkli has bolstered its foundation with smart hires. Our first two hires embody a rare skill set. With one co-founder holding a PhD in educational science and AI, and the other an experienced teacher, the app’s development is rooted in technical expertise paired with real-world classroom experience.
Looking beyond the horizon, Sparkli intends to bring consumer access online in 2026, so that any tech-savvy parent can download the app for their child. This newest strategy aims to build upon the app’s success inside schools and reach families in their homes. It encourages lifelong education beyond formal school walls.
The world of education is changing fast. Sparkli’s mission to provide a fun and truly interactive platform for learning could make it a strong player in the competitive world of edtech. The founders hope that their approach will serve as the model for a new generation of educational apps. Most importantly, they highlight the need for engagement, not just information absorption.
