Three former Googlers are developing an AI-powered learning app for kids

Big and emerging tech companies want to use AI for manufacturing programs and hardware about children. Most of these activities are written or spoken only, and children may not enjoy them. Three former Google employees want to tackle this problem with their AI-powered networking 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 persuasive answers to their questions.

“Children, by definition, are very curious, and my son asks me questions about how cars work or how the rain starts. My method was to use ChatGPT or Gemini to explain these concepts to a six-year-old child, but this is still a wall of text. What children want is to have a conversation. This was our initial approach when we launched Sparkli,” Poojary told TechCrunch.

Before starting Sparkli, Poojary and Kang started a travel integration group called The Wandering Bird is a video marketing software, Shop runat Google’s Area 120, the company’s internal incubator. Poojary later went on to work for Google and YouTube in acquisitions. Marchand, who is Sparkli’s CTO, was also one of the founders of Shoploop and later worked at Google.

“When a kid asks what Mars looked like fifty years ago, we might as well show them a picture,” Poojary said. 10 years ago, we might have shown them a video. With Sparkli, we want children to interact and see what Mars is like.

The founder said that education systems often fail to teach modern concepts. Sparkli aims to teach children about topics such as art design, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship by creating an AI-powered “learning journey.”

The app allows users to search for specific topics in different categories or ask their own questions to create a learning curve. The app reviews one new topic every day so kids can learn something new. Children can listen to the sounds made or read the sounds. Topics in one topic include audio, video, graphics, quizzes, and games. The app also creates optional itineraries that don’t make people ask questions right or wrong.

Poojary also said that the startup uses artificial intelligence to create all its media content. The company can create information within two minutes from the user asking a question, and is trying to reduce this time.

The founders also said that although AI assistants can help children learn some subjects, their focus is not on education. It said that for its product to work, the first two authors were PhDs in educational science and AI, and a teacher. This was an obvious decision to ensure that the written content was effective for the children, and remembered the teaching.

One of the biggest concerns for children using AI is safety. Companies like OpenAI and Character.ai are facing lawsuits from parents who say the tools encouraged their children to harm themselves. Sparkli said that although some topics such as sex are completely prohibited on the program, when a child asks about topics such as self-harm, the program tries to teach them about psychological skills and encourage them to talk to their parents.

The company is testing its program with a multi-campus school with more than 100,000 students. Currently, its target audience is children between the ages of 5-12, and they tested the initiative in more than 20 schools last year.

Sparkli has also created a teacher section that allows teachers to see their progress and assign homework to students. The company said it was inspired by Duolingo to make the app functional enough for kids to learn concepts and feel like they’ll be coming back to the app again and again. The program has opportunities and rewards for children for completing courses regularly. It also offers kids quest cards, based on the first avatar they set up, to learn about different topics.

“We’ve seen a great response from our school pilots. Teachers often use Sparkli to create tours that kids can explore at the beginning of class and guide them through the discussion process.

Although the founders want to work with schools around the world for the next few months, they want to open up the opportunity to buy and allow parents to download the program by the middle of 2026.

The company has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Swiss firm Founderful. Sparkli is Founderful’s first-play edtech investment. The company’s founder, Lukas Wender, said the team’s technical expertise and market potential led him to invest in the startup.

“As a father of two children who are in school now, I see them learning interesting things, but they don’t learn subjects like economics or technology. I thought from a business perspective, Sparkli takes them away from computer games and allows them to learn things in depth,” said Wender.