Courtesy of Gizmo
What if endless doomscrolling could be put to good use? What if, rather than sending you down a spiral of negativity and anxiety, spending too much time on your phone could help you learn instead?
Now, that may sound like a clickbait Instagram advert trying to sell you on the five things you need to know to hack your productivity, but it’s also the question AI startup Gizmo is trying to answer.
The learning platform, which takes notes, documents and online content (students upload web links) and uses AI to generate personalised study materials for students, has raised $22m in Series A funding to try to turn screen addiction into a tool for education.
“We’re not fighting for less screen time — we’re fighting for better screen time,” says Petros Christodoulou, co-founder and CEO of Gizmo. “People aren’t addicted to their phones, they’re addicted to progress, novelty, social connection and reward. Gizmo redirects that energy toward something that builds their future.”
Harnessing the same AI technology that powers social media, Gizmo is trying to make learning as engaging as mindless social media use, turning uploaded content into interactive flashcards and adaptive quizzes, gamifying challenges that are tailored to each student.
Like the language learning app Duolingo, or Snapchat, Gizmo taps into this addiction to progress and reward through daily streaks to keep users engaged and coming back to the app. Users can also follow their friends and see how they’re doing compared to their friends.
Courtesy of Gizmo
Given the average person spends around six hours and 40 minutes per day on a screen — and for Gen Z this number rises to around nine hours — that’s a lot of attention to play with.
However, Gizmo does not have the space entirely to itself. Based in the US, StudyFetch reportedly has around six million users and raised $11.5m Series A last year for its personalise AI-powered learning platform. Meanwhile in Canada, Penseum, another free “AI tutor” that generates personalised flashcards, notes and quizzes for users, has raised CA$200k, while
Gizmo’s Series A round was led by Shine Capital, with participation from Ada Ventures, Seek Investments, GSV and NFX, who previously led their $3.5m seed round in 2023. The startup plans to use the funds to “doubl[e] down on making learning the most engaging and rewarding thing on your phone”.
“Gizmo has cracked something that's eluded consumer learning for years: organic, student-driven engagement at massive scale,” says Ethan Daly, General Partner at Shine Capital. “We see Gizmo as the defining learning platform for the next generation of students and lifelong learners.”
StudyFetch, which operates in the same space, raised $11.5m Series A last year.
Christodoulou founded Gizmo in 2021 alongside friends and fellow University of Cambridge graduates Robin Jack (CTO) and Paul Evangelou (CPO), bringing together their experience in education, computer science and AI engineering.
Over the past five years the platform has amassed more than 13 million users across 120 countries, with learners ranging from GCSE students in the UK to college students in the US and even professionals in the Philippines upskilling.
Turning passive content into personalised, active learning, the founders say they are trying to “make studying addictive”, leaning into, rather than away from, universal phone addiction.
“We’ve backed Gizmo from the beginning because we saw a fundamentally different approach to learning, one that meets students where they already are and turns everyday screen time into meaningful progress,” said Check Warner, Co-Founding Partner at Ada Ventures. “What the team has built is not just a product, but a behaviour change at scale.”
While the platform is specifically for 16- to 21-year-olds preparing for exams, enabling students to upload lecture recordings, YouTube videos, PowerPoint slides or photographs of handwritten notes and turn these into personalised learning tools, there is a wide range of use beyond this.
The startup plans to use the funds raised to expand the company’s engineering and AI team to support growth in the US college market next.
