Education Technology

AWS Selects 15 Ed Tech Startups for Education Accelerator Program

• By Kate Lucariello
• 01/11/24

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the selection of 15 innovative ed tech startup companies to take part in its inaugural Education Accelerator program. The program will support these companies to apply data, analytics, and AI to transform teaching and learning and tackle educational challenges to improve student success.

The startups were chosen out of thousands of applicants by a diverse AWS committee, based on "the strength of their idea, technical readiness, and an extensive application and interview process," AWS said in its public sector blog announcing the cohort selection.

Cohort members serve in various learning sectors, including preK–12, higher education, and workforce education. They are focused on solving problems encountered in "student engagement, financial literacy, student health and well-being, upskilling, and operational inefficiencies," said AWS.

The 10-week program is being held at Amazon's headquarters in Seattle. Each startup will receive up to $100,000 in computing credits, workshops, individualized curricula, business and technical mentoring, help from Amazon leaders and teams, investor and customer networking opportunities, and ongoing advice and support.

An Emerging Technology Showcase, in collaboration with OMNIA Partners, will round out the program.

"The ultimate goal is for ed tech founders to leave the program ready to close new customer opportunities, expand their partner networks, raise funds, and fast-track their ed tech startup," said AWS.

The inaugural cohort participants are listed by AWS as follows:

• Augmental Learning, County of Sussex, DE, provides an AI-powered learning platform that empowers educational content creators by offering next-generation personalized learning, intelligent content creation, and data-driven analytics.
• Blackbullion, London, UK, is a financial well-being platform and app equipping students with financial skills. The platform houses the UK's largest hub of support funds, scholarships, and grants for students.
• enlightenAI, San Francisco, is creating an AI-powered personalized teacher's assistant designed to enhance educators' impact while making their work more sustainable, including grading and giving feedback.
• Hilight, New Orleans, empowers teachers and school staff to post highlights and share the many small wins happening across their schools and districts every day. Hilight helps users capture the meaningful moments that often go unnoticed to enhance educator satisfaction, well-being, collective teacher efficacy, and retention.
• Infini‑D Learning, Provo, UT, has developed an immersive platform that transforms classroom learning by combining story-driven narratives with collaborative problem solving to help students tackle real-world challenges.
• Lessonbee, Mount Vernon, NY, facilitates equitable student access to standards-aligned health education and provides teachers with tools and resources to help drive health equity in schools. Lessonbee's whole-school wellness solution provides data to help teachers improve student self-efficacy and well-being.
• Listening, San Francisco, provides a mobile app designed for students and researchers to transform textbooks and research papers into audio, providing insights and note-taking ability on-the-go and helping to streamline the research process.
• Oblio, Murrieta, CA, is improving the university admissions process with an innovative AI tool designed to help admissions officers, faculty, staff, and coaches send hyper-personalized e-mails, streamline communication, and embrace multilingual inclusivity.
• OneRange, New York City, is helping companies to automate the management of individualized learning budgets. Its platform enables discovery and access to the right resources for each individual by leveraging data across all formats of learning, including courses, books, conferences, and more.
• Perlego, London, UK, is an online subscription for more than 1 million academic textbooks. It is designed to provide a more affordable and sustainable textbook solution for learners around the world, by partnering with publishers and eliminating the cost of print, distribution, and retail markup.
• Praxis AI, Sacramento, is a digital education and research company powered by generative AI. Their anytime, anywhere solutions combine student-teacher interactions with personalized mentoring, assessment, and support.
• Quizard AI, Dover, DE, is an academic app designed to help students study for tests and quizzes. Available in multiple languages, Quizard is making personalized learning accessible to students across the globe.
• SchoolBI, San Francisco, is a user-friendly platform that helps deliver data-driven insights. The platform is designed to reduce traditional inefficiencies, time constraints, and bottlenecks and improve the ability to easily report results across departments.
• Sown To Grow, Oakland, is a support platform that empowers schools to improve student social, emotional, and academic well-being through an easy and engaging reflection and feedback process. Designed by a team of former educators for practical classroom impact, Sown To Grow is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, Digital Promise, and New Schools Venture Fund.
• The Juice, Miami, is an interactive learning platform designed to develop students' reading comprehension, critical thinking, information and media literacy skills, and civics knowledge using fun and engaging original content.

For more information, visit the blog entry.