Nectir, a company building secure artificial intelligence infrastructure for schools, announced it has raised $12.5 million in new funding to expand its platform designed specifically for higher education institutions. The funding round was led by Rethink Impact and included participation from Gingerbread Capital and Strada, as well as existing investors.
The San Francisco–based company is focused on helping colleges and universities deploy AI tools in a controlled and compliant way that aligns with institutional policies, academic integrity standards, and privacy regulations. The platform enables schools to create custom AI assistants that support students, faculty, and administrators and integrates directly with institutional systems, such as learning management platforms.
Nectir was founded by Kavitta Ghai and Jordan Long, who built the platform after experiencing challenges with academic support and access to resources during their own time in college. The company’s goal is to provide scalable AI infrastructure that delivers personalized academic support to students while helping educators manage workloads and maintain oversight of AI use.
The company says AI adoption among students is already widespread, with many using generative AI tools without guidance or institutional frameworks. Nectir aims to address this gap by offering schools a structured environment where AI assistants are grounded in course materials, institutional knowledge, and faculty-defined rules.
Nectir’s AI assistants can provide students with personalized academic help, offer teaching support for professors, and automate administrative workflows. According to the company, the system is designed so that student data is not used to train models and operates in compliance with FERPA and SOC 2 standards.
The platform has already been deployed across more than 100 campuses and is used by approximately 80,000 students. Nectir also recently secured a landmark agreement with the California Community Colleges system, making its AI platform available to more than 2.1 million students across 116 campuses.
The company says early outcomes suggest the platform is improving academic engagement and performance. In a peer-reviewed study conducted at Los Angeles Pacific University, campus-wide GPA increased by 7.5 percent following adoption of the system. Surveys also showed that 74 percent of students reported a better learning experience and 36 percent reported increased motivation.
Nectir plans to use the new capital to expand its infrastructure, support broader institutional deployments, and continue building AI tools tailored to the needs of educators and students.
KEY QUOTES:
“With this new chapter of funding, we are scaling our vision to meet the needs of the modern educational landscape. At Nectir, we are not looking at the 30,000-student problems; we are architecting solutions for the 30-million-student reality. We believe educational accessibility is paramount, and our infrastructure provides a personalized learning partner for every single student, ensuring that high-quality, AI-driven support is a universal standard, not a luxury.”
Kavitta Ghai, CEO And Co-Founder, Nectir
“This is a 24/7 program, so even in the middle of the night, students can get accurate feedback. It’s also very customizable. If you sent this over to ChatGPT, you’d get very different answers. Nectir AI locks them into a system that I get to control.”
Adam Hathaway, Chabot College
“AI use is pervasive in higher education and is here to stay. Yet it carries massive risk when used in an unstructured, unsecured, and unprincipled way. Nectir’s compliant platform is driving better learning experiences, better student motivation, and, ultimately, better outcomes in both secondary and higher education. This is edtech innovation at its best, and we couldn’t be more excited to back the team in this next phase of growth!”
Jenny Abramson And Jill Ni, Rethink Impact
