EdTech company Matr has closed a £4.75m Series A round to develop its AI maths teaching platform.
The round was led by the UCL Technology Fund and Downing Ventures, with follow on investment from Ananda and innovation charity Nesta. Sherry Coutu also joined as an Angel investor.
This fresh funding brings the company’s total raise to £8.25m.
Matr offers weekly one-to-one online maths lessons for children aged seven to 11, containing content which aligns with the national curriculum.
Matr is using its database of over 500,000 recordings of online teaching sessions to develop AI software to automate the training and development of teachers from across the globe.
Matr was founded by Tom Hooper in 2013: “For the last four years we’ve worked really hard to demonstrate our global ambitions, delivering hundreds of thousands of hours of teaching from our global teaching community to tens of thousands of children.
“By partnering with new investors, and some of the world’s leading Learning Scientists at UCL, we are well positioned to accelerate our vision of creating a global community of online teachers and students, making effective one-to-one learning accessible to all,” he added.
Matr initially began as a online teaching platform for children in UK schools. This latest cash injection will be focused on developing the Matr platform to support families at home.
The platform has already delivered over 500,000 one-to-one sessions to nearly 40,000 children across the UK from tutors based in India and Sri Lanka.
In addition to the latest funding, Matr has announced a partnership with UCL, with the aim of developing a qualification that would standardise the level of teaching.
The UCL Technology Fund is managed by Albion Capital. Matr is the fifth AI business the fund has invested in to date.
David Grimm, manager of the UCL Technology Fund at Albion Capital, commented on the news: “Matr has the potential, in collaboration with UCL, to set the standard for online teaching and achieve traction in global tutoring markets. Its plans to build an efficient AI system and use it to certify its teachers with a UCL qualification will set it apart in this unregulated market. This is an excellent opportunity to invest in a strong team, with a proven and clearly differentiated business model.”
Richard Lewis, investment director of Downing Ventures, concluded: “We are delighted to join the Albion UCL Technology Fund, Ananda Ventures and Nesta in this funding round. Matr has grown into the leading provider of online maths intervention programmes for Key Stage 2 pupils and we look forward to supporting the team as they expand their business further.”