Seoul-based AI and EdTech startup Riiid has obtained US$ 18M in a Series C funding round held in July 2020, led by DSC Investments and other venture capitals including Alpenroute Asset Management, Premiere Partners, IMM Investment, and Korea Growth Investment Corporation.
The fresh funds raised will be used by the company to conduct R&D and further develop its AI technology.
About the startup
Founded in 2014 by Software engineer Jaewe Heo, Designer MinSung Noh and CEO Jang Young Jun, the startup is an AI-powered e-learning platform and provides every student with a personal tutor that outperforms human tutors at a fraction of the cost.
The startup has published the results of its research on its AI tutoring technology in an academic journal. Riiid was also the foremost Korean company to present a research paper on AI technology at a conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), a globally-renowned conference on artificial intelligence, in 2016.
The company presently offers an independently developed AI technology as a B2B solution known as SantA.Inside which can be easily used to provide educational services that surpass human capability. A team of over 30 researchers from prestigious Korean and overseas universities, including UC Berkeley, Yale, Seoul National University, KAIST, POSTECH, Korea University and Hanyang University, is working to constantly develop and improve SantA.Inside.
Riid has launched two products, namely Santa TOEIC and ReNote.
Santa TOEIC is an AI-based web/mobile learning platform for TOEIC. It predicts the user’s score in an assessment once he/she solves 6-10 problems. The platform organizes individually personalized problems and lecture series in real-time and creates the most resourceful learning patterns and schedules for its users. Santa SAT is the first global example of Santa TOEIC that provides optimum learning ways for users to quickly increase SAT scores by evaluating their weaknesses. “ReNote” is a smart notepad that manages wrong answers.
Noteworthy achievements of Riiid
- Riiid has been awarded 4th Industrial Revolution Grand Prize by Minister of Science and ICT.
- Riiid was one of the highest grossing App on Google Play Store in 2018.
- Riiid got listed in the Top 10 list of AI Startups in Korea in 2018.
Previous funding
- Riid had previously bagged US$ 10.77M in Series B funding from Korea Investment Partners, Company K Partners, Partners Investment, Huayi Investment, ES Investor and NP Equity Partners in 2019. The company reached its BEP (break-even point) within four months after launching AI tutor service Santa TOEIC, attracting the investment as a result of continuous development.
- The startup had also obtained a US$ 1.7M investment from DSC Investment, Shinhan Capital and one other firm in 2016.
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