Focused on transforming how teachers and students find and create content through artificial intelligence , Teachy, a two-year-old startup, raised a Series A funding round of R$40 million, putting Brazil on the map for AI manufacturers.
The funding round was led by Goodwater Capital, a venture capital fund specializing in consumer technology that has invested in giants such as Facebook, Spotify , and Twitter . Reach Capital, Endeavor, NXTP , and Roble Ventures also participated.
“We always wanted to prove that it’s possible to create cutting-edge technology in Brazil, and with this investment, we’ve received confirmation of that,” says Pedro Siciliano, co-founder and CEO of Teachy. “With this funding, we will be able to advance in building an engineering and design team in Brazil, as well as accelerate our international growth.”
Founded in 2022 by Siciliano, a former professor and engineer with an MBA from Stanford University, and Fábio Baldissera, an engineer and serial entrepreneur, the startup aims to reduce by 80% the time teachers spend outside the classroom, with tasks such as lesson planning, activity preparation, and assignment grading.
Currently, teachers dedicate about 20 hours a week to completing these tasks, and with Teachy’s technology, which offers and produces curriculum-aligned materials, all customizable with AI, this number can be reduced to 4 hours a week.
“It’s not fair that half of teachers’ week is spent outside the classroom on bureaucracy, which doesn’t add much value to students,” says the CEO.
It is with this premise that Teachy has already reached more than 1 million teachers on its platform, especially in Latin America and Asia, impacting more than 60,000 schools and 10 million students globally in over 170 countries.
Currently, Teachy’s business model relies on monthly fees paid by both teachers and schools. However, the entrepreneurs expect that, in a short time, the schools will be responsible for paying this cost.
“Our focus is to bring cutting-edge AI to these 60,000 schools, thus enabling them to provide a better quality of life for their teachers,” says Siciliano. “In addition, there is also a clear benefit in the increased grades of students who are affected by Teachy’s materials. 95% of teachers witnessed an increase in student grades with the technology.”
With this data in mind, the company plans to expand its services throughout the Southern Hemisphere, which largely faces the same educational challenges seen in Brazil.
According to the entrepreneur, there are comparable solutions in the world, but none reach this audience and understand the challenges they need to overcome. “In the United States, everyone has connectivity and at least one cell phone, which we know is not a reality in much of Brazil,” says Siciliano.
“It is this unique feature that makes schools in countries like Indonesia and Mexico come to us to use this Brazilian technology, which has often been underestimated by the rest of the world,” says the CEO.
