Big tech companies and upcoming startups want to use genetic artificial intelligence to build software and hardware for kids. Many of these experiences are limited to text or voice, and children may not find it engaging. Three ex-Googlers want to overcome this obstacle with their creative interactive AI-based app, Sparkli.
Sparkli was founded last year by Lax Poojary, Lucie Marchand and Myn Kang. As parents, Poojary and Kang were unable to satisfy their children’s curiosity or provide 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’s still a wall of text. What kids want is an interactive experience. That was our core process behind founding Sparkli,” Poojary told TechCrounchary.
Before 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 for shopping. Marchand, who is Sparkli’s CTO, was also one of the co-founders of Shoploop and later worked at Google.
“When a child asked what Mars looked like fifty years ago, we could have shown them a picture,” Pujari said. “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 education systems often lag behind in teaching modern concepts. Sparkli wants to teach kids about skills planning, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship by creating an AI-powered learning experience.
The app allows users to explore some predefined topics in different categories or ask their own questions to create a learning path. The app also highlights a new topic every day to let kids learn something new. Children can either listen to the voice generated or read the text. Chapters under a theme include a combination of audio, video, pictures, quizzes and games. The app also creates multiple choice adventures, which don’t create pressure to get questions right or wrong.
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Poojary mentioned that the startup uses genetic artificial intelligence to create all of its media on the fly. The company can create a learning experience within two minutes of a user asking a question and is trying to further reduce that time.
The startup said that while AI assistants can help children learn certain subjects, their focus is not on education. She said that to make her product effective, the first two hires were a PhD holder in the science of education and artificial intelligence and a teacher. This was a conscious decision to ensure that its content best served children, taking into account the principles of pedagogy.
One of the main concerns about children using artificial intelligence is safety. Companies like OpenAI and Character.ai are facing lawsuits from parents who claim these tools encouraged their children to self-harm. Sparkli said that while some topics like sexual content are completely off-limits 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 more than 100,000 students. Currently, its target audience is children aged 5-12, and it has tested its product in more than 20 schools last year.
Sparkli has also created a teacher module that allows teachers to track progress and assign homework to children. The company said it took inspiration from Duolingo to make the app engaging enough for kids to learn concepts and also feel like coming back to the app often. The app has streaks and rewards for kids who complete lessons regularly. It also gives kids quest cards, based on the original avatar they’ve created, to learn about different topics.
“We’ve seen a very positive response from our school pilots. Teachers often use Sparkli to create assignments that children can explore at the beginning of the lesson and lead them into a more discussion-based format. Some teachers have also used it to create [homework] after explaining a topic to let the children explore further and get a measure of their understanding,” said Poojary.
While the startup wants to primarily work with schools worldwide for the coming months, it wants to open up consumer access and allow parents to download the app by mid-2026.
The company has raised $5 million in pre-seed funding led by Swiss venture capital firm Founderful. Sparkli is Founderful’s first pure edtech investment. The company’s founding partner, Lucas Vender, said the team’s technical skills and market opportunities prompted him to invest in the startup.
“As a father of two kids who are now in school, I see them learning interesting things, but they’re not learning things like financial literacy or technology innovation. I thought that from a product standpoint, Sparkli takes them away from video games and lets them learn things in an immersive way,” Wender said.
