A new approach to children’s learning is emerging as 3 former Google professionals build an interactive, generative AI-powered app designed to make education more engaging for young minds.
The app, called Sparkli, was founded last year by Lax Poojary, Lucie Marchand, and Myn Kang. The founders aim to move beyond text- and voice-heavy AI tools by offering kids a more immersive and interactive learning experience.
As parents, Poojary and Kang found it difficult to keep up with their children’s curiosity using existing AI tools.
“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 is still a wall of text. What kids want is an interactive experience. This was our core process behind founding Sparkli,” Poojary told sources over a call.
Before Sparkli, Poojary and Kang co-founded Touring Bird, a travel aggregator, and Shoploop, a video-based social commerce app, at Area 120. Poojary later worked at Google and YouTube in shopping roles. Marchand, now CTO of Sparkli, also co-founded Shoploop and later worked at Google.
“When a kid asked what Mars looks like fifty years ago, we might have shown them a picture,” said Poojary. “Ten years ago, we might have shown them a video. With Sparkli, we want kids to interact and experience what Mars is like.”
Sparkli focuses on teaching modern concepts such as skills design, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship through AI-powered learning “expeditions.” Kids can explore preset topics or ask questions to build their own learning paths. Each topic blends audio, video, images, quizzes, games, and choose-your-own adventures without pressure.
The platform generates all media assets using generative AI, creating a full learning experience within 2 minutes. To ensure quality, the company’s first hires included a PhD in educational science and AI, and a teacher.
Safety is a key focus. While topics like sexual content are banned, sensitive questions such as self-harm are addressed through emotional intelligence guidance and encouragement to speak with parents.
Sparkli is being piloted with an institute covering over 100000 students. It targets children aged 5-12 and was tested in over 20 schools last year. A teacher module allows progress tracking and homework assignments, inspired by Duolingo.
The startup has raised $5 million in pre-seed funding led by Founderful.
“As a father of two kids who are in school now, I see them learning interesting stuff, but they don’t learn topics like financial literacy or innovation in technology,” said Lukas Weder. “I thought from a product point of view, Sparkli gets them away from video games and lets them learn stuff in an immersive way.”
The company plans to focus on schools globally before opening consumer access by mid-2026.
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