Big tech companies and upcoming startups want to use generative AI to build software and hardware for kids. A lot of those experiences are limited to text or voice, and kids might not find that captivating. Three former Google employees want to get over that hurdle with their generative AI-powered interactive app, Sparkli.
Sparkli was founded last year by Lax Poojary, Lucie Marchand, and Myn Kang. As parents, Poojary and Kang were not able to satisfy their children’s curiosity or give engaging answers to their questions.
“Kids, by definition, are very curious, and my son would ask me questions about how cars work or how it rains. My approach was to use ChatGPT or Gemini to explain these concepts to a six-year-old, but that is still a wall of text. What kids want is an interactive experience. This was our core process behind founding Sparkli,” Poojary told TechCrunch over a call.
Prior to launching Sparkli, Poojary and Kang co-founded a travel aggregator called Touring Bird and a video-focused social commerce app, Shoploop, at Google’s Area 120, the company’s internal startup incubator. Poojary later went on to work at Google and YouTube on shopping. Marchand, who is the CTO of Sparkli, was also one of the co-founders of Shoploop and later worked at Google.
“When a kid asked what Mars looks like fifty years ago, we might have shown them a picture,” said Poojary. “Ten years ago, we might have shown them a video. With Sparkli, we want kids to interact and experience what Mars is like.”
The startup said that education systems often fall behind in teaching modern concepts. Sparkli wants to teach kids about topics like skills design, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship by creating an AI-powered learning “expedition.”
The app lets users explore some predefined topics in different categories or ask their own questions to create a learning path. The app also highlights one new topic every day to let kids learn something new. Kids can either listen to the generated voice or read the text. Chapters under one topic include a mix of audio, video, images, quizzes, and games. The app also creates choose-as-you-go adventures that don’t create the pressure of getting questions right or wrong.
Poojary mentioned that the startup uses generative AI to create all of its media assets on the fly. The company can create a learning experience within two minutes of a user asking a question, and it is trying to reduce this time further.
The startup mentioned that while AI assistants can help children learn certain topics, their focus is not on education. It said that to make its product effective, the first two hires were a PhD holder in educational science and AI, and a teacher. This was a conscious decision to ensure its content better serves children, keeping principals of pedagogy in mind.
One of the key concerns around kids using AI is safety. Companies like OpenAI and Character.ai are facing lawsuits from parents who allege that these tools encouraged their children to self-harm. Sparkli said that while certain topics like sexual content are completely banned on the app, when a child asks about topics like self-harm, the app tries to teach them about emotional intelligence and encourages them to talk to their parents.
The company is piloting its app with an institute that has a network of schools with over 100,000 students. Currently, its target audience is children aged 5-12, and it has tested its product in over 20 schools last year.
Sparkli has also built a teacher module that allows teachers to track progress and assign homework to kids. The company said that it was inspired by Duolingo to make the app engaging enough that kids can learn concepts and also feel like coming back to the app frequently. The app has streaks and rewards for kids for completing lessons regularly. It also gives kids quest cards, based on the initial avatar they have set up, for learning different topics.
“We have seen a very positive response 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. Some teachers also used it to create [homework] after they explain a topic to let kids explore further and get a measure of their understanding,” Poojary said.
While the startup wants to primarily work with schools globally for the next few months, it wants to open up consumer access and let parents download the app by mid-2026.
The company has raised $5 million in pre-seed funding led by Swiss venture firm Founderful. Sparkli is Founderful’s first pure-play edtech investment. The firm’s founding partner, Lukas Wender, said that the team’s technical skill and market opportunity nudged him to invest in the startup.
“As a father of two kids who are in school now, I see them learning interesting stuff, but they don’t learn topics like financial literacy or innovation in technology. I thought from a product point of view, Sparkli gets them away from video games and lets them learn stuff in an immersive way,” Wender said.
Originally published at TechCrunch
