Noodle Factory, an AI-powered chat platform focused on higher education and corporate learning, has raised $500,000 in seed funding led by EdTech accelerators EduSpaze and SuperCharger Ventures as well as a consortium of angel investors.
With the fresh funding, the company plans to extend its platform to K-12 institutions and expand its presence in English-speaking markets including the UK, Australia, the US and Canada.
Noodle Factory provides a chatbot platform chiefly for learning purposes. It allows enterprises to ingest existing knowledge bases for the same to leverage machine learning to interpret the content and provide a personalized learning experience, adaptable to the needs of the learner.
The platform enables educators to instantly automate adaptive tutoring, mentoring or onboarding, administrative tasks such as marking and answering student FAQs. It also offers personalized tutoring and mentoring with human-like interaction.
Founded in 2018 by Yvonne Soh and Jim Wagstaff, who are also the co-founders of corporate EdTech startup Jam Factory, the Singapore-based EdTech startup helps educators effectively scale tutoring and exam preparation. The platform uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automate the creation, preparation and grading of exams and assessments, as well as to set up knowledge bases for AI-enabled tutoring. Students engage in interactive dialogue and have personalized one-on-one tutoring, via chat. With Noodle Factory, educators can save over 400 hours a year.
According to the company, home-based learning and new administrative challenges to implement safe distancing protocols could lead to educators experiencing a disconnect from their peers and the curriculum. It said that their students may also have low motivation and engagement levels in a digital learning environment. With Noodle Factory’s platform, educators are able to spend less time creating and grading assessments and focus on teaching students and developing the curriculum.
Commenting on the funding, Alex Ng, Managing Director of EduSpaze, said “We see many schools adopting technology to augment the way teachers teach and Noodle Factory’s AI platform can really help to further engage the students, providing an effective way for personalized learning to improve learning outcome.”
Noodle Factory’s solutions are being used on more than 2,000 students from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, SIM Global Education and the Institute of Technical Education.
