imagi Raises $4.5M Seed Round To Build The Safe Education Layer Betwee

Backed by Brighteye Ventures, DayOne Capital, and Will.i.am and partnering with Lovable and OpenAI, imagi is scaling its AI literacy platform, which has already put safe AI tools in the hands of 700k students

NEW YORK / STOKHOLM. 23 July 2026

imagi has raised a $4.5 million seed round to expand access to structured AI learning for students and teachers in the US and beyond. The round was led by Brighteye Ventures and DayOne Capital, with participation from FemInvest and We Are Human, led by the founders of Kahoot.

Operating across more than 100 school districts in all US states, including the Hawaii Department of Education, imagi’s platform offers K-12 students direct, supervised access to AI tools, within a curriculum designed to build genuine AI literacy. By partnering with OpenAI and Lovable, imagi structures classroom AI teaching with safety guardrails, giving educators the support to confidently deploy these tools.

The funding round also includes a notable group of angels spanning founders, operators, and educators, including ElevenLabs founder Mati Staniszewski, former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke and Voi CEO and Co-founder Fredrik Hjelm. Singer Will.i.am and serial entrepreneurs Sophia Amoruso and Simon Squibb also invested in the over-subscribed round, alongside leaders from OpenAI, Spotify and Lovable. imagi also received investment from mission-aligned funders, including Morgan Stanley and Sparkmind Capital.

Building a safe choice for children and AI educators

Across various subjects including computer science, STEM, art, and even math, teachers are bringing creative AI-assisted coding into their classrooms. Students are using AI through the safe Lovable × imagi platform to build their own apps and projects, learning to create with AI rather than just cheat with it.

While research from CollegeBoard found that more than 85% of school administrators view AI education as valuable, 45% report that access to GenAI tools is restricted in the classroom. This is despite the fact that 84% of high school students use LLMs to help with schoolwork. Through partnerships with OpenAI and Lovable, imagi offers ready-to-teach AI lessons on the platforms that students are already familiar with.

imagi has already given more than 700,000 students in 140 countries access to safe, compliant and pedagogically sound AI. imagi has seen 30x year-on-year user growth and 3x ARR growth, with district partnerships now live in the US. imagi will use the latest funding to continue scaling across US K-12 education and integrate additional frontier AI tools. The company also plans to scale teacher-training programmes, team hiring with a focus on US-based talent, and investment in compliance and research to cement imagi as the default safe choice for school district administrators.

imagi was established by co-founders Dora Palfi (CEO) and Beatrice Ionascu (CTO), following a user-centred research project conducted at KTH University in Stockholm. The company doubled down on US K-12 education in 2024. The company is headquartered in New York with a team spanning the US, UK, Sweden, and Finland. In November 2025, imagi added Sari Hurme-Mehtälä to its leadership team as Chief Growth Officer. Sari sold her edtech company Kide Science to Accelerate Learning, becoming the first Nordic edtech company to make an exit to the US.

Dora Palfi, Co-founder and CEO of imagi comments: “Today's schoolchildren are the first generation who will never know a world without AI. This means AI education won’t just be the new ICT, but the new literacy. But unlike reading schemes, AI is not designed with children in mind. This means we need safe, tested AI education for children, with guardrails trusted by educators and parents. AI is accelerating faster than any technology before, which is why we cannot bury our heads in the sand, and ignore the need to introduce children to AI in a responsible way. Working already with Lovable and OpenAI, we’ve engaged hundreds of thousands of young people, and with our latest funding and ever-growing roster of partners, we hope to give millions more access to safe frontier AI tools.”

"Within weeks of introducing imagi into my classroom, my students weren't just building apps for educational purposes, but for their friends, for their families, and for anyone with a problem that needed solving. Seeing the shift in their mindsets from consumers to creators is the true power of AI in education. With imagi, I knew my students were learning in a safe, structured environment, where trust is an imperative," said Lisa Haines, STEM Teacher, Indiana.

"imagi sits at the intersection of two of the most important trends in education: the mainstreaming of AI and the urgent need for structured, safe digital literacy," said Benoit Wirz, Founding Partner at Brighteye Ventures. "Dora, Sari and Beatrice have built a product that schools can actually trust, and the traction they've achieved so far speaks for itself."

Zsolt Weiszbart, Partner at Day One Capital, comments: “Providing the next generation with safe access to AI tools supervised by educators is imperative. They will be at the forefront of the technological change AI is bringing, and imagi has already delivered this for hundreds of thousands of young people across the globe. We look forward to supporting them as they continue to scale pedagogically sound access to frontier AI tools.”

“Teaching young people coding and computing has often lagged behind the pace of technological change,” said Fabian Hedin, co-founder of Lovable. “In the AI era, students and teachers keep on asking if software engineering will even exist in the future. Software development is transforming, not disappearing, and we’re glad to be partnering with imagi to ensure that the first truly AI-native generation can safely learn about the cutting edge of technology."

Laura Modiano, Head of Founder Experience, Global at OpenAI, added: "The goal of education has always been to help young people succeed in the world they're growing into, and today learning to navigate AI should be at the very top of the agenda. imagi’s technology will help make high-quality AI teaching available to every student.”

About imagi

imagi is the safe education layer between AI tools and K-12 schools. Founded in 2018, imagi brings structured, curriculum-aligned AI learning to students and teachers, making it possible for districts to deploy AI literacy at scale, safely and with confidence. imagi is backed by Brighteye Ventures, DayOne Capital, and angels from OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Lovable, Kahoot, HubSpot, and GitHub. The company has raised $5.5M to date. Learn more at imagilabs.com.

About Brighteye

Brighteye is the most active European early-stage VC investing in the future of learning and work. The fund was launched by Founding Partners Alex Spiro Latsis and Benoit Wirz in 2017. Domiciled in Luxembourg with research offices in London and Paris, Brighteye invests across Europe at Pre-Seed, Seed and Series A stages, with €210M in assets under management across 3 Funds.

About Day One Capital

Day One Capital is a Budapest-based venture capital firm focused on backing the best technology entrepreneurs from Central & Eastern Europe. With over a decade of investing experience in the region, we have built a strong presence and a network to find and support outstanding founders from day one. We manage EUR 94 million across three active funds, investing at the pre-seed and seed stages in tech startups across CEE.

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imagi Raises $4.5M Seed Round To Build The Safe Education Layer Between AI Tools And Schools

Building a safe choice for children and AI educators

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