California and London-based AI startup Quench.ai announced on Monday that it has secured $5m (€4,48m) in a pre-seed round of funding.
The company says it will use the funds to launch Quench.ai’s innovative learning coach platform, revolutionising the $1T learning and development industry.
Firstminute Capital, Tuesday VC (formerly CrunchFund), BY Venture Partners, Ada Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Notion Capital, IFG, Antler, Ventures Together, and Northzone, and angel investors participated in the round..
With the pre-seed funding round, Quench.ai can also bolster its current team of 16 employees. This move will be instrumental in advancing product and tech development, as well as enhancing customer sales and support efforts.
A new age learning model
Husayn Kassai, founder of Quench.ai, brings his expertise from a decade of experience scaling AI-based identity unicorn Onfido.
Kassai reveals that while building his initial startup directly after completing university and expanding it to a team of over 500, he realised the importance of fostering an effective learning environment.
“Yet I couldn’t find a simple way to equip our teams with the learning opportunities they needed to continuously grow their skills, learn more, and move faster,” he says.
Husayn further explains that while learning and skill development have evolved, video-based learning is still lagging. According to him, learning is shifting from a “just-in-case” approach to a “just-in-time” model, becoming more “self-directed and increasingly video-first.”
“Quench is a new learning experience specifically designed for our new learning needs,” he says. According to him, the company’s main objective is to assist busy professionals in uncovering “the most relevant minutes from the world’s largest indexed educational video content library.”
A vast library of educational videos
Quench.ai has a vast library of indexed educational videos, including public and licensed course content. The platform also allows companies to index their internal video resources, making their knowledge actionable. Its models improve with each new query and subsequent recommendations.
“We’re proud to back Quench.ai and see the launch of its AI learning coach,” Brent Hoberman from firstminute Capital says. He believes that the platform has the potential to bring about a revolutionary change in personalised learning and development.
“By leveraging AI’s power and scalability, Quench.ai offers targeted content at people’s fingertips, transforming how we learn,” Hoberman adds.
Per Maryam Torshizi, founder and CEO of DeepSearch Labs and a user of Quench, the platform functions like an AI librarian that consistently selects the appropriate book and directs her to the precise page, paragraph and sentence.
“No more impostor syndrome; with Quench, I can walk straight into my next meeting knowing how to anticipate and solve the problems ahead to have a greater impact faster,” she says.
