Most apps that assist you to learn languages have features where you choose options or swipe away improper answer cards — you’re roughly interacting with a machine. Language-learning app Praktika is adopting a unique approach: It permits you to create personalized AI-powered avatars to duplicate the experience of getting a non-public tutor, leveraging inflections like tone of voice and emotions to assist make learning a language feel more natural.
Praktika claims to have 1.2 million energetic monthly users across 100 countries and said it generated revenue of just about $20 million within the last 12 months. To continue to grow, the startup has now secured a $35.5 million Series A funding round led by Blossom Capital. The round follows a previously unannounced $2.5 million seed fundraise that was led by Creator Ventures and Blue Wire Capital.
Praktika’s users interact with AI avatars who then “tailor” lessons for you and might speak with several accents, akin to American, British, Asian, and Indian. The more the learner interacts with the avatar, the more tailored the teachings will turn into — not less than that’s the concept.
The corporate’s founding team, Adam Turaev (CEO), Anton Marin (CTO) and Ilya Chernyakov (CPO), previously built Cleverbots, an AI service business that counted corporations like Coca-Cola, Kimberly-Clark, and AstraZeneca amongst its clients.
“Most language learning apps are all about human interaction, with a human tutor. Or it’s ‘machine-to-human’ interaction involving clicks and drag and drops,” Turaev told TechCrunch. “But we’re the one app on the market about tone of voice, where you mimic human-to-human interaction. We were the primary to master this AI avatar approach, which may be very natural to language learning. In order that’s what really makes it different from another app that you would be able to see available on the market without delay.”
When asked how the startup is using AI, he said, “We orchestrate different LLMs, but we’re an AI-native company. We have now used GPT-4, GP Turbo, Gemini, Claude, and Mistral. We experiment with different versions of their models as well. We gathered a whole lot of training data, and the app still learns. We have now terabytes of this human-to-AI interaction data. We use anonymized data to bolster the models.”
“Praktika’s founding team is bringing its deep knowledge of AI to create a fun, reasonably priced option to learn languages with personalized AI tutors. For too long, other learning apps have taken students without any consideration and shortchanged them. The team’s determination to construct a worldwide challenger has translated into one in all the fastest-growing early-stage consumer AI corporations globally,” Ophelia Brown, managing partner of Blossom Capital, said in an announcement.
Each the seed round and the recent Series A saw participation from outstanding figures like Carles Reina (ElevenLabs) and Patrice Evra (five-time Premier League champion).
Sasha Kaletsky, managing partner at Creator Ventures, added in an announcement: “Learning a language is a basic human experience, and the Praktika team has successfully injected this human-like element into the product using AI … Over 1,000,000 learners worldwide are improving their English with Praktika already, and that is just the beginning.”
