It’s virtually impossible in the present day to find out when a pupil’s writing has been composed utilizing ChatGPT or one other GenAI device, and it may be a nightmare to disprove incorrect accusations. An AI edtech startup referred to as Brisk has constructed a device that would at the least assist academics determine among the telltale indicators, and it’s now asserting $15 million in new funding on the again of respectable traction.
Alongside a writing inspector, Brisk’s platform affords round 40 instruments for academics and college students to make use of by the use of a Chrome extension. The platform makes use of generative AI, laptop imaginative and prescient and different AI options that Brisk says might help not solely velocity up work, however do the work higher. These embrace writing lesson plans, checks and shows; adjusting work for various skills; grading work, and extra.
“The prevailing edtech stack as we all know it, which is round 140 totally different instruments that the common instructor within the U.S. makes use of in a given college 12 months, just isn’t prepared for AI,” Brisk’s CEO and founder Arman Jaffer mentioned in an interview. “We’re making an attempt to construct the AI-native edtech stack.”
The funding can be utilized in half to construct extra instruments, and partially to develop to extra platforms. A Microsoft integration, aimed on the many colleges which might be Microsoft retailers, is deliberate for autumn 2025.
Enterprise has to this point been brisk for San Francisco-based Brisk. Because it raised a seed spherical of $5 million in September 2024, its person base has grown five-fold, and Jaffer mentioned the corporate had “40x’d” its income in 2024 (it’s value noting that the corporate was ranging from zero). Brisk says greater than 2,000 colleges in 100 international locations use its merchandise in the present day, and greater than 90% of its enterprise comes from inbound curiosity. One in 5 Okay-12 academics within the U.S. have put in the Brisk Extension as of February 2025, Jaffer added.
Bessemer Enterprise Companions is main the spherical, with earlier backers Owl Ventures, South Park Commons, and Springbank Collective additionally collaborating.
Brisk’s funding and progress come at a time when expertise and training have gotten more and more intertwined.
Educators have spent years embracing an growing array of expertise to enhance how they work in addition to to offset different main modifications of their instruments (such because the decline of textbooks) and different areas, akin to finances cuts. (The recent DoE changes in the U.S. have but to play out, but it surely has raised issues that they may spell but extra erosion of assets.)
Enter tech, the place adoption is straightforward, in a way. There are actually lots of of startups and far bigger expertise giants rolling out edtech apps. Some outfits cater on to college students and households, just like the immense Khan Academy empire, whereas others direct themselves at colleges and educators such because the suites developed by Google and Microsoft.
And, simply as enterprises have embraced consumerization of their IT departments — searching for apps which have the identical usability as the preferred shopper apps — so have academics searching for inroads to attach with college students. Kahoot is a key instance of how training has been ‘gamified,’ the idea being that is a technique of creating studying extra accessible.
AI is one more step in edtech’s pure evolution. AI firms are constructing studying instruments to that finish, and their fundamental pitch is very similar to Brisk’s: AI is coming whether or not you prefer it or not, and it’ll make everybody’s lives higher.
However as with different segments of the world of labor and play, not all AI strikes are acquired with open arms. OpenAI’s academics’ information to ChatGPT — launched in November 2024, arguably effectively after the horse had bolted — was met with criticism over the larger points that it failed to deal with round accuracy and information safety.
Jaffer based Brisk after spending time in edtech in a unique capability. He spent greater than 5 years on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the place he conceived of and led a staff constructing Notebooks, a Google Docs various aimed toward enhancing collaboration between college students and academics. Finally, Notebooks did not take off, not least as a result of, effectively, Google Docs does the job, but additionally as a result of AI actually modifications the sport for collaboration. That ethos was carried into Jaffer’s subsequent swing of the founder bat.
If utilizing AI rings alarm bells, Brisk needs to muffle that with a measured strategy: help, not alternative.
The corporate’s pupil writing inspector doesn’t conclude “this was written by ChatGPT.” It begins with a video of a pupil’s work course of on-screen, which it then watches in fast-motion, flagging when that pupil has copy/pasted info or is in any other case doing different issues which might be uncharacteristic of how they work. That is then despatched on to the instructor who can assess whether or not it could possibly be a sign of copying from some other place, or if the work was certainly created by GenAI.
The preferred device within the stack, “Targeted Feedback,” makes use of generative AI to learn pupil essays (on Google Docs) and create feedback which might be tailor-made to age, a grading rubric or different requirements in the event that they’ve been uploaded or chosen. Earlier than something is shared with college students, academics can assessment and edit the feedback (within the best-case state of affairs, they’re doing that quite than simply shifting them together with no oversight).
Whether or not the concept of AI taking over a few of academics’ work, and possibly even doing it higher, is liked or feared on the planet of training, evidently the development line is just too clear to be ignored, mentioned Kent Bennett, the Bessemer associate who led this funding.
“We’re huge believers at this AI second in monitoring sectors like training expertise, which have a popularity for being tech phobic. This popularity usually arises as a result of the high-value workflow in these environments includes human language, and thus wasn’t as addressable with legacy software program – with LLMs all of that may change,” he advised TechCrunch in an e mail trade.
“[But] one of many greatest surprises as we appeared into AI powered ed-tech was that educators weren’t simply tolerating AI, they’re aggressively in search of it out,” he mentioned, including that it’s “apparent” that academics can’t be lower out of the equation altogether.
Trying ahead, Brisk can be constructing extra immersive instruments past its extensions. Later this 12 months, it is going to be switching on a brand new internet platform in order that “educators can work cohesively and natively inside the Brisk setting.” It’s going to embrace new assets and actions, Jaffer mentioned.
Brisk additionally needs to supply extra “multimodal” integrations. These will embrace the flexibility for college students to submit image-based work, along with textual content, for evaluations; and a “podcast” function to generate audio variations to explain paperwork and extra.