Dora Palfi comes from a family of teachers. Not surprisingly, “it was instilled in me that education is something that can completely change the trajectory of your life,” she told TechCrunch.
In 2018, she and Beatriz Ionascu launched Imagi, a company that provides tools for building curriculum and teaching K-12 students and teachers coding, basic computer skills, and, as of last year, AI literacy. The company announced a $4.5 million seed round Thursday with investors including Brighteye Ventures, Day One Capital, and artist Will.i.am.
Notably, the company announced a partnership with vibe coding tool Lovable last November. This allows teachers to create lessons and provide controlled access to the platform for students to learn how to vibrate chords with guardrails in place. OpenAI also provided $1 million in credits for schools to access the Imagi x Lovable tool for free. “Thanks to their support, we will continue to offer free trials and freemium access,” Palfi said.
She shared some examples from past partnerships, including a teacher who built an app that translated their curriculum into the 15 languages spoken in their classrooms.
“Another student built himself a website promoting his lawn mowing business and linked it to his calendar so people could book time directly on the website,” she said.
In some ways, this product is an answer to the debate about how AI should be implemented in schools and how young people should engage with this powerful technology. Speaking to TechCrunch, Palfi said that the minds behind OpenAI and Lovable are “experts in building cutting-edge AI tools,” while education experts like herself “have the experience and knowledge to safely deploy them in the classroom.”
In this case, a secure deployment means that every prompt and every response generated by the platform is screened and any violations removed before they reach students. Imagi is also compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This means zero data retention and no training from Imagi's partners on student data and activity. Palfi said the system also trains teachers in how to use AI, coding and computational tools so they can confidently teach students.
“Instead of worrying about student cheating or AI regression, education systems need to adapt to reality,” Palffy continued. “Most kids are already using AI, but we need to teach them to build with AI, not just passively consume it.”
This is especially important given the impact of AI on the job market that these young students will eventually enter. Not everyone has access to AI tools at home, so schools are often the best place to teach this new technology.
Since its founding, Imagi has worked with more than 700,000 students in 140 countries, Palfi said. This new capital will be used to expand into K-12 schools, invest in district sales, hiring, and build new product features, and launch a new platform next month.
This work has been updated.
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