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AI-powered math tutoring app Photomath raises $23 million

Source: venturebeat.com

AI-powered math tutoring app Photomath today announced that it raised $23 million in series B funding. The company says the proceeds will be used to grow headcount, invest in AI, and scale both product and marketing development.

An estimated 65% of households in the U.S. with children report using online learning during the pandemic, with 11% reporting having no live contact with a teacher in the past week (as of November 2020). Test results from the Portland-based nonprofit organization NWEA show the preliminary impact of the shift. The test scores of 4.4 million students in grades 3 through 8 suggest that students lost ground in math, underscoring the need for remote tutoring solutions.

Photomath, which reached 220 million downloads during the pandemic, was founded in 2014 by Damir Sabol, a father who was struggling to help his sons with math homework. Sabol, a Croatia national, previously founded two other companies, one of which was PhotoPay (now Microblink), a mobile payment app with text recognition. Damir with his cofounders leveraged the technology built into PhotoPay, integrated a math solving algorithm, and created a learning tool for his sons that grew into Photomath.
 
Matemáticas, Fórmula, Física, Escuela
 
Using computer vision and a smartphone camera, Photomath reads and solves mathematical problems, providing animated calculation steps and instructions about how to approach them. Photomath’s core math solver leans on a human-designed rule system and a domain-specific language that’s used to program math-solving procedures.

Photomath supports addition as well as more complex calculus problems, and it ships with a “smart calculator” that lets users enter or edit scanned math problems with a keyboard. Graphs from the app help to visualize math problems, many of which are designed by Photomath’s in-house team of math teachers who research teaching methods and develop frameworks for solving math problems.

Photomath

Photomath offers a $9.99 per month premium service, Photomath Plus, that includes a number of features unavailable in the free version of the app. In addition to teacher-approved problem explanations and math tips and definitions, Photomath Plus offers custom visual aids and word problem solutions.

Menlo Ventures led 100-employee Photomath’s latest round of fundraising with participation from GSV Ventures, Learn Capital, Cherubic Ventures, and Goodwater Capital. It brings the Croatia- and San Mateo-based company’s total raised to date to over $29 million.

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