Dora Palfi comes from a family of teachers. Of course, then, “it instilled in me that education is something that can completely change the trajectory of your life,” he told TechCrunch.
In 2018, she and Beatrice Ionascu started Imagea company that helps provide K-12 students and teachers with the tools to teach and create curriculum around coding, basic computing skills and, since last year, AI literacy. On Thursday, the company announced a $4.5 million seed round, with investors including Brighteye Ventures, Day One Capital and artist Will.i.am.
Specifically, last November, the company announced a partnership with vibe coding tool Lovable that allows teachers to create lessons and give students controlled access to the platform so they can learn how to code vibe with guardrails. OpenAI also provided $1 million in credits so schools can access the Imagi x Lovable tool for free. “We continue to provide free trials and access to freemium thanks to their support,” Palfi said.
He shared some examples of what has come out of the collaboration so far, such as the teacher who built an app that translated her curriculum into 15 languages spoken in her classroom.
“Another student built himself a website to promote his lawn mowing business, with a link to his calendar so people can book time directly on the website,” he said.
The product is, in some ways, a response to the debate about how artificial intelligence should be developed in school and how young people should engage with this powerful technology. Speaking to TechCrunch, Palfi said the brains behind OpenAI and Lovable are “experts in building frontier AI tools,” while education experts like herself “have the experience and knowledge to deploy them safely in the classroom.”
In this case, secure deployment means that every prompt and response generated by the platform is audited, with violations removed before they reach the student. Imagi also complies with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), meaning there is no data retention and Imagi partners are not trained on student data and activities. The system also trains teachers how to use AI, coding and computing tools so they can confidently teach it to students, Palfi said.
“Instead of worrying about students cheating or falling behind with AI, the education system needs to adapt to reality,” Palfi continued. “Most kids are already using AI, but we need to teach kids to build with AI instead of just passively consuming it.”
This is especially important given the impact of AI on the job markets these new students will eventually have to enter. Because not everyone has access to AI tools at home, school is often the best place to teach this new technology.
Since its inception, Imagi has worked with more than 700,000 students in 140 countries, Palfi said. This new capital will be used to expand to more K-12 schools, invest in territory sales, hire, build new product capabilities and help launch a new platform next month.
This piece has been updated.
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