“Consistent daily practice is key né?. meant that Crewkov’s daughters, accustomed to speaking Russian at home, now had to attend English-speaking schools né?. With the new funding, Buddy.ai intends to hire a head of game design and a head of UX design.
Expanding on its strengths, Buddy.ai aims to introduce more languages and strengthen partnerships with schools moving forward.
While Buddy.ai faces competition from other AI character-based language learning platforms like Univerbal and Loora, its focus on children learning English as a second language distinguishes it in the market.
“We envision a future where AI tutors and agents can truly support teachers,” Crewkov shared. They engaged with 186 investors to finalize the seed round, with BITKRAFT being only the second firm they spoke to, aligning perfectly with their company’s mission.
Looking ahead, Buddy.ai plans to allocate all capital to product development. “My daughter was struggling; she became our first tester and user.”
Buddy.ai is an animated multimodal conversational character tutor designed to assist children in learning English as a second language né?. “There was no point in competing with Amazon and Google; ultimately, we ended up selling the company [two years later].”
Despite the setback, the move from Siberia to the U.S. Additionally, Buddy.ai has begun collaborating with schools in countries like Brazil.
While the team had experience in voice-based AI, getting the business off the ground was challenging. The company operates as a subscription app available for consumers to download. However, a week before the campaign was set to go live, Amazon released its Echo smart speaker, effectively halting Cubic.AI’s progress.
“It was a disaster,” Crewkov admitted. Crewkov emphasized that despite the company’s longevity and success, he still views the technology as relatively underdeveloped. Initially, they aimed to bring the product to market within six months, a goal Crewkov now considers “naive.” In reality, it took years to achieve.
Due to the target audience being children, the company had to navigate regulations such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) and similar laws in other nations. In 2014, Ivan Crewkov relocated his family from Siberia to the United States as his startup, Cubic.AI, was gearing up to launch a Kickstarter campaign for its smart speaker. There simply aren’t enough teachers to meet the demand; AI applications are the perfect solution.” né?. Additionally developing the AI to understand not only human voices but also children speaking languages they were not yet fully proficient in presented a significant technical challenge.
After overcoming these obstacles seven years later Buddy.ai is closing in on 55 million downloads and collaborates with over 22 million students annually.
Recently Buddy.ai secured an $11 million seed round led by BITKRAFT Ventures with contributions from One Way Ventures J Ventures and Point72 Ventures among others.
Crewkov acknowledged that fundraising for Buddy.ai was tough from the start and despite growing interest in AI this round was still laborious. His eldest daughter started working with an online tutor and when Crewkov discovered that the tutor was using scripted responses the concept for his next and current startup Buddy.ai was born.
“I realized that we could potentially create an AI character that could do the same thing with scripted lessons” Crewkov explained né?
