Personal AI learning coach, Quench.ai, has raised £4m ($5m) in pre-seed funding.
The startup was founded by Husayn Kassai, former CEO and co-founder of unicorn AI identity company Onfido.
Quench leverages conversational AI to help busy professionals discover the most relevant content from the world’s largest indexed educational video content library.
The company’s pre-seed funding round was led by prominent venture capital firms and angel investors, including firstminute capital, Tuesday VC (formerly CrunchFund), BY Venture Partners, Ada Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Notion Capital, IFG, Antler, Ventures Together, Northzone scout, and over 50 founders.
Kassai said: “Building my first startup straight out of university and scaling it to a team of over 500, I knew we had to become an effective learning organisation.
“Yet I couldn’t find a simple way to equip our teams with the learning opportunities they needed to continuously grow their skills, learn more, and move faster.”
He added: “Learning and skill development have changed, but video hasn’t caught up yet. Learning is moving from a ‘just-in-case’ to a ‘just-in-time’ model – self-directed and increasingly video-first.
“Quench is a new learning experience specifically designed for our new learning > needs, helping busy professionals discover the most relevant minutes from > the world’s largest indexed educational video content library.”
Quench.ai has an extensive library of indexed educational videos and also allows companies to index their internal video resources to make their knowledge actionable.
Brent Hoberman from firstminute capital, commented: “We’re proud to back Quench.ai and see the launch of its AI learning coach, which has the potential to revolutionise personalized learning and development.
“By leveraging AI’s power and scalability, Quench.ai offers targeted content at people’s fingertips, transforming how we learn.
“With such an experienced team, and impressive early product-market fit, Quench.ai is poised to address the evolving talent development and upskilling needs of companies today.”
Quench user Maryam Torshizi, founder and CEO at DeepSearch Labs, said: “Quench is like an AI librarian that picks out the right book and points you to the right page, paragraph and sentence – every single time.
“It lets me skip searching and scrolling and discover what I need to know. No more impostor syndrome; with Quench, I can walk straight into my next meeting knowing how to anticipate and solve the problems ahead to have a greater impact faster.”
The pre-seed funding round will enable Quench.ai to expand its current team of 16 people to support product and tech development, as well as customer sales and support.