Our Story

Our Story

Our story started in 2020 with a question: What is the best way to create equitable and engaging learning experiences for all students? 

Teachers across the nation are constantly tackling escalating workloads and class sizes. We believe that an expanded vision of AI as social, collaborative partners in classrooms can augment teacher pedagogies and help them to focus on what they do best – creating rich learning experiences that inspire their students.

We envision AI Partners supporting teachers in catching crucial ‘teachable moments’—those eureka moments that excite students and spark ideas. We develop AI tools that provide meaningful insights that can guide authentic whole-class and group discussions.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) recognized the awesome potential of our vision to transform education and honored us with an award to become one of seven flagship AI Institutes.

We strongly believe that sustained collaboration with students and teachers from diverse backgrounds is the only way to turn such a vision into reality. We work with several school districts to build our AI systems on diverse speech patterns, facial expressions, eye movements and gestures from real-world classrooms.