Big tech companies and upcoming startups want to use generative AI to build software And material for children. Many of these experiences are limited to text or voice, and children might not find this engaging. Three former Google employees want to overcome this obstacle with their AI-based generative interactive application, Sparkli.
They were shining was founded last year by Lax Poojary, Lucie Marchand and Myn Kang. As parents, Poojary and Kang were unable to satisfy their children’s curiosity or give engaging answers to their questions.
“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 it’s still a wall of text. What kids want is an interactive experience. That was our main process behind creating Sparkli,” Poojary told TechCrunch over a call.
Before launching Sparkli, Poojary and Kang co-founded a travel aggregator called Bird on tour and a video-focused social commerce app, Store managementat Google’s Area 120, the company’s in-house startup incubator. Poojary later worked at Google and YouTube on shopping. Marchand, who is the CTO of Sparkli, was also one of the co-founders of Shoploop and later worked at Google.
“When a child asked what Mars looked like fifty years ago, we could have shown them a picture,” Poojary explained. “Ten years ago, we might have shown them a video. With Sparkli, we want kids to interact and discover what Mars looks like.”
The startup said education systems often fall behind in teaching modern concepts. Sparkli wants to teach children topics like skill design, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship by creating an AI-powered learning “expedition.”
The app allows users to explore predefined topics in different categories or ask their own questions to create a learning path. The app also highlights a new topic every day to allow children to learn something new. Children can listen to the generated voice or read the text. Chapters under a single topic include a mix of audio, video, images, quizzes and games. The app also creates choose-as-you-go adventures that don’t create the pressure of answering the right or wrong questions.
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Poojary mentioned that the startup uses generative AI to create all of its media assets on the fly. The company can create a learning experience within two minutes of a user asking a question, and it’s trying to reduce that time even further.
The startup mentioned that while AI assistants can help children learn certain subjects, they do not focus on education. The company said that to make its product effective, the first two recruits were a PhD holder in education sciences and AI and a teacher. This was a conscious decision to ensure its content better serves children, keeping educational principles in mind.
One of the main concerns about children using AI is safety. Companies like OpenAI and Character.ai face lawsuits from parents who allege the tools encouraged their children to self-harm. Sparkli said that while some topics like sexual content are completely banned on the app, when a child asks about topics like self-harm, the app tries to teach them emotional intelligence and encourages them to talk to their parents.
The company is testing its application with an institute that has a network of schools with more than 100,000 students. Currently, its target audience is children aged 5 to 12 and last year the company tested its product in more than 20 schools.
Sparkli has also created a teacher module that allows teachers to track progress and assign homework to children. The company said it took inspiration from Duolingo to make the app engaging enough that kids could learn concepts and also want to come back to the app frequently. The app offers streaks and rewards to children who regularly complete their lessons. It also gives kids quest cards, based on the initial avatar they created, to learn different topics.
“We’ve seen a very positive response from our school pilots. Teachers often use Sparkli to create expeditions that children can explore at the start of class and lead them in a more discussion-based format. Some teachers have also used it to create [homework] after explaining a topic to allow children to explore further and gauge their understanding,” Poojary said.
Although the startup wants to work primarily with schools around the world in the coming months, it wants to open access to consumers and allow parents to download the app by mid-2026.
The company raised $5 million in pre-seed funding led by Swiss venture capital firm Founderful. Sparkli is Founderful’s first purely edtech investment. Lukas Weder, founding partner of the company, said the team’s technical skills and market opportunities attracted him to invest in the startup.
“As a father of two kids who are currently in school, I see them learning interesting things, but they’re not learning topics like financial literacy or technological innovation. I thought from a product perspective, Sparkli took them away from video games and allowed them to learn things in an immersive way,” Weder said.
This article was first published on January 22, 2026.
