Chalkie, an edtech startup that uses AI to help teachers create curriculum-aligned lessons in minutes, has raised £1m in pre-seed funding, UKTN can exclusively reveal.
Founded in 2024, Chalkie is a tool to quickly generate lessons based on subject, education level and curriculum.
The company claims its platform has already been used by more than 100,000 teachers to create over 500,000 lessons.
Chalkie was co-founded by Mark Huges, who previously founded the edtech company Tutorful, valued by Dealroom at £16m.
Hughes launched Chalkie alongside chief executive Phillip Daneshyar, a Y Combinator alumnus and founder of Kanda.
“For years we’ve seen teachers struggle to cope with the increasing demands outside of the classroom,” said Daneshyar.
“With Chalkie teachers can fight back against the crippling work burden they are under and focus on what truly matters; teaching. Our AI augments teachers to help them build lessons faster whilst maintaining quality and control”.
The investment came from the London-based VC and Marshmallow backer Triple Point Ventures.
“With family members who are teachers, I’ve seen first-hand how much time lesson preparation takes, often eating into evenings and weekends,” said Sam Stone, an investor at Triple Point Ventures.
“Chalkie completely changes that. The customer love is obvious, the improvement over the manual process is dramatic, and the growth and retention metrics are among the best I’ve ever seen.”