Buddy.ai, a Montenegro-based conversational AI tutor for kids, recently announced that it has closed a $11.12 million (€10.2 million) seed funding round, bringing the total venture funding raised since launch to €12 million. The round was led by BITKRAFT Ventures, a leading global investment platform focused on gaming and interactive media, along with Educapital, the largest European education technology fund.
Other investors, including One Way Ventures, J Ventures, Point72 Ventures, and Goodwater Capital, participated in the funding round. Additionally, a group of incredible angel investors contributed, including the co-founder of Oculus, former executives at Riot Games, and Hollywood executive producers from iconic series like The Simpsons.
Buddy.ai uses artificial intelligence to provide one-on-one tutoring to children worldwide. According to UNESCO data, 69 million teachers are needed worldwide to achieve universal basic education. In the face of a significant global teacher shortage, AI tutoring is the most efficient and cost-effective solution to fill these gaps. Though its tutoring roots are in English language learning, the organization recently introduced an Early Learning Course and plans to expand into various areas.
Reflecting on the company’s mission, Ivan Crewkov, Buddy.ai’s CEO and Co-founder, said:
Buddy.ai was inspired by watching my daughter’s struggles as an immigrant learning a new language in a new country. The Buddy.ai team believes that personalized education is a right and not a privilege, and every child deserves a personal tutor. So when we look towards the future of the platform, we see every child in the world as a potential student.
To achieve the company’s exceptional voice-based interaction, Buddy.ai began developing its proprietary Speech Recognition technology four years before the AI boom brought on by ChatGPT. Whereas most AI technology is trained on adult voices and not aligned with regulations specific to children, Buddy’s Speech Recognition (BSR) capabilities are COPPA-compliant and fine-tuned to understand children’s voices. With over 25,000 hours of children’s speech in their dataset, BSR outperforms Google and other off-the-shelf speech recognition systems.
Jasper Brand, Partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, added:
The traditional 1-on-1 teacher-to-child education model is unaffordable for many families and needs to be more scalable for teachers. Buddy.ai is uniquely positioned with a threefold combination of technical depth, expertise in Early Learning, and a knack for positively engaging content. Kids have a higher learning efficacy when their learning journey is met with dynamically adjusting difficulty levels and amplified when engaged with a fun IP. It gets even better when you can democratize access to great learning experiences for an underserved global population.
Buddy, which recently surpassed 50 million downloads, now reaches more than 20 million students annually. In 2023, the platform witnessed 22 million downloads worldwide, a 92% year-over-year increase in monthly active users, and a 93% increase in monthly recurring revenue. Buddy admirers can be found worldwide; about half of the user population is in Latin America, and many are in English-speaking nations. Buddy.ai achieved 350% year-over-year growth after launching an Early Learning Course in the US market for English-speaking children aged 4-7.
With this funding, Buddy.ai plans to lead the AI revolution in early learning by further advancing its proprietary AI technology, continuing to mature the app’s gaming and world-building elements, and expanding partnerships with schools and educational institutions.
