Oboe, the learning startup from Anchor co-founders and former Spotify executives Nir Zicherman and Michael Mignano, today announced that it has raised $16 million in Series A funding led by a16z, with participation from existing investors Eniac, Haystack, Offline, and Factorial. The round also saw investment from individuals such as Adam DiAngelo, Gary Tan, Lenny Racitzky, Matty Staniszewski, Mikey Schulman, Jared Hecht, and MG Siegler.
The platform, which officially launched in September, allows users to define learning goals and use AI to create courses for them.
The startup’s funding comes three months after the app launched and a year after raising a $4 million seed round. Zickerman said the reason behind the new round is to foster massive growth.
“We want to reach billions of people who want to learn about new topics. This is a huge opportunity,” he told TechCrunch by phone. “To achieve this vision, we need to execute faster and reach more audiences at scale.”
“We have a team of successful consumer product builders who execute well, which gives us an advantage over other startups in the market,” he added.
Brian Kim, a partner at a16z, said he was impressed with how quickly Oboe started generating content on a topic and didn’t keep users waiting behind a loading indicator.
“We have a thesis on how AI-assisted learning can help people explore new topics, and we’ve been looking for the right company. After Oboe launched, we tried it and loved the product. We wanted to support founders who were ambitious, had the flexibility to adopt different form factors, and understood AI to build big platforms, and we found that in Oboe,” he told TechCrunch over the phone.
The company is also making changes to its core course generation experience. Previously, Oboe produced different text and audio formats for users with different styles. Additionally, we have placed a cap on course generation based on your payment plan.
In the new version, the app first understands your goals and based on that generates chapters to help you learn about those topics. Additionally, users can see other formats such as quizzes appear seamlessly within the course materials. For some courses, Oboe also generates flashcards to help you remember the course content easily.
When it comes to audio, instead of choosing between a podcast format and a lecture format, the company generates the podcast for you and changes its tone based on learning materials and other signals from the user.
Zicherman said the company recognizes the high demand from users who want to learn about STEM topics (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). The startup has been working on sourcing the best materials for these topics, including programming.
He said good teachers decide what is the best way to learn for their students, and the company takes that approach of designing courses for learners.
Oboe is revamping its pricing model to offer users unlimited course generation.
However, if you want to dig deeper into a topic, you can pay $15 per month ($144 per year) to access more course chapters. There is also a Pro plan for $40 per month ($384 per year), which provides access to unlimited chapters and allows users to export or download courses for use outside of oboe. The company said this is suitable for students who want to print learning materials for offline use.
Zuckerman said Oboe currently offers courses in English, but hopes to reach more parts of the world with localized courses and language support. The platform is currently available on the web, with mobile support planned for the future.
Over the past few years, multiple tools, including Google’s NotebookLM and ex-Googler’s Huxe, have made it possible to type prompts and retrieve podcast episodes to explore topics. Although these are one-off generations, Oboe’s approach allows you to delve deeper into a topic with chapter-based learning.
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