imagi has raised $4.5 million in seed funding to expand its artificial intelligence literacy platform for K-12 students and teachers across the United States and other international markets. The round was led by Brighteye Ventures and Day One Capital, with participation from FemInvest and We Are Human, an investment group led by the founders of Kahoot.
The oversubscribed financing also included ElevenLabs founder Mati Staniszewski, former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke, Voi co-founder and CEO Fredrik Hjelm, musician and technology investor will.i.am, Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso and entrepreneur Simon Squibb.
Executives and operators connected to OpenAI, Spotify and Lovable also participated, along with Morgan Stanley and education technology investor Sparkmind Capital.
The financing brings imagi’s total capital raised to $5.5 million.
imagi plans to use the funding to expand its presence across U.S. K-12 education, integrate additional frontier AI technologies and increase the number of schools and districts using its platform.
The company will also expand teacher training, recruit additional employees with an emphasis on U.S.-based talent, and invest in compliance and research.
imagi describes its platform as a safe education layer between AI tools and schools. Rather than allowing students to interact with general-purpose AI products without supervision, the company surrounds those technologies with curriculum, safety controls, teacher guidance and age-appropriate learning experiences.
Through partnerships with OpenAI and AI software development platform Lovable, imagi provides ready-to-teach lessons that allow students to gain direct experience with widely used AI technologies.
The platform is designed to teach students how AI systems work, where they may produce unreliable information and how the technology can be used responsibly to create software, conduct research and solve problems.
For school administrators, imagi provides a structured framework for introducing AI without requiring individual teachers to independently evaluate every model, product and safety concern.
According to research cited by imagi, more than 85% of school administrators believe AI education is valuable, but 45% say access to generative AI products remains restricted in classrooms.
At the same time, approximately 84% of high school students are already using large language models to assist with schoolwork. This creates a gap between students’ informal use of AI and the structured instruction available through their schools.
imagi is seeking to close that gap by allowing students to use AI within a supervised and curriculum-aligned environment.
The company currently operates across more than 100 school districts in all 50 states, including the Hawaii Department of Education.
More than 700,000 students across 140 countries have accessed imagi’s tools. The company reported 30-fold year-over-year user growth and a three-fold increase in annual recurring revenue.
The platform’s rapid adoption reflects growing pressure on schools to prepare students for an economy in which AI is expected to influence software development, research, communication and many other professions.
imagi believes AI literacy will become a foundational skill comparable to traditional computer literacy. Its curriculum is intended to help students progress from simply consuming AI-generated information to actively building products and understanding the technology’s capabilities and limitations.
The company said students have used its tools to create educational applications and projects addressing problems faced by friends, relatives and their communities.
Teachers can use imagi to introduce AI development and computational thinking without giving students unrestricted access to tools that were not originally created for children.
imagi was founded in 2018 by CEO Dora Palfi and Chief Technology Officer Beatrice Ionascu following a user-centered research project at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
The company increased its focus on the U.S. K-12 market in 2024 and is now headquartered in New York. Its team operates across the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and Finland.
In November 2025, imagi appointed Sari Hurme-Mehtala as Chief Growth Officer. Hurme-Mehtala previously founded Kide Science, which was acquired by Accelerate Learning in what imagi described as the first acquisition of a Nordic education technology company by a U.S. buyer.
The latest financing will help imagi pursue additional district-level partnerships, which can allow schools to deploy a common AI education program across multiple classrooms and grade levels.
The company also plans to add more AI tools as the market develops, allowing its curriculum to evolve alongside changes in models, applications and student use cases.
Brighteye Ventures is an early-stage investor focused on the future of learning and work. The firm manages approximately EUR 210 million across three funds.
Day One Capital is a Budapest-based venture capital firm investing in technology startups from Central and Eastern Europe. It manages EUR 94 million across three active funds.
KEY QUOTES:
“Today’s schoolchildren are the first generation who will never know a world without AI. This means AI education won’t just be the new ICT, but the new literacy.”
“Unlike reading schemes, AI is not designed with children in mind. This means we need safe, tested AI education for children, with guardrails trusted by educators and parents.”
“Working already with Lovable and OpenAI, we’ve engaged hundreds of thousands of young people, and with our latest funding and ever-growing roster of partners, we hope to give millions more access to safe frontier AI tools.”
Dora Palfi, Co-Founder and CEO of imagi
“Within weeks of introducing imagi into my classroom, my students weren’t just building apps for educational purposes, but for their friends, for their families, and for anyone with a problem that needed solving.”
“Seeing the shift in their mindsets from consumers to creators is the true power of AI in education. With imagi, I knew my students were learning in a safe, structured environment, where trust is an imperative.”
Lisa Haines, STEM Teacher in Indiana
“imagi sits at the intersection of two of the most important trends in education: the mainstreaming of AI and the urgent need for structured, safe digital literacy.”
“Dora, Sari and Beatrice have built a product that schools can actually trust, and the traction they’ve achieved so far speaks for itself.”
Benoit Wirz, Founding Partner at Brighteye Ventures
“Providing the next generation with safe access to AI tools supervised by educators is imperative.”
“imagi has already delivered this for hundreds of thousands of young people across the globe. We look forward to supporting them as they continue to scale pedagogically sound access to frontier AI tools.”
Zsolt Weiszbart, Partner at Day One Capital
“Software development is transforming, not disappearing, and we’re glad to be partnering with imagi to ensure that the first truly AI-native generation can safely learn about the cutting edge of technology.”
Fabian Hedin, Co-Founder of Lovable
“The goal of education has always been to help young people succeed in the world they’re growing into, and today learning to navigate AI should be at the very top of the agenda.”
“imagi’s technology will help make high-quality AI teaching available to every student.”
Laura Modiano, Global Head of Founder Experience at OpenAI
