Today it is virtually impossible to determine when a student’s writing was composed using ChatGPT or another Genai tool, and disproveing false accusations can be a nightmare. The AI Edtech startup called Brisk has built a tool that will help teachers identify some of the signs of Telltale at least, and is now unveiling a new $15 million funding behind decent traction.
Alongside the Writing Inspector, Brisk’s Platform offers approximately 40 tools that teachers and students can use using the Chrome extension. The platform not only allows you to speed up your work, but also get better work using generated AI, computer vision, and other AI features Brisk says. These include creating lesson plans, tests and presentations. Adjust work for different abilities. Grading work, etc.
“The existing Edtech stack we know is about 140 different tools that the average US teacher uses for a given academic year, but it’s not ready for AI,” Brisk CEO and founder Arman Jaffer said in an interview. “We’re trying to build an AI-Native Edtech stack.”
This funding will be used in part to build more tools and in part to expand to more platforms. Microsoft Shops Microsoft integration for many schools is planned for fall 2025.
So far, the active San Francisco-based business has been active. Since raising a $5 million seed round in September 2024, its user base has grown five times, with Jaffer saying the company made money in 2024 (it’s worth noting that the company started from scratch). Brisk says more than 2,000 schools in 100 countries use products today, with over 90% of their businesses coming from inbound profits. One in five US K-12 teachers have installed active extensions as of February 2025, Jaffer added.
Bessemer Venture Partners also lead the round, with former backers Owl Ventures, South Park Commons and Springbank Collective.
Brisk’s funding and growth occurs when technology and education are increasingly intertwined.
Educators have spent years adopting a wide variety of techniques that have been growing, improving their work methods and offsetting other major changes in other areas such as tools (such as textbook reductions) and budget cuts. (The recent changes to DOE in the US have not yet been unfolded, but it raises concerns that it will spell out more resource erosion.)
In a sense, enter techniques that are easy to employ. Literally hundreds of startups and much larger tech giants are deploying the Edtech app. Some dresses are direct to students and families, like the giant Khan Academy Empire, but others oversee themselves for schools and educators, such as suites developed by Google and Microsoft.
And just as businesses accept consumption in their IT sector, they are looking for apps that are looking for the same ease of use as the most popular consumer apps. Kahoot is an important example of how education is “gaming” and the theory is one way of making learning more accessible.
AI is another step in Edtech’s natural evolution. AI companies are building learning tools for that purpose, and their basic pitch is very similar to Brisk’s. AI will appear whether you like it or not, and it will make everyone’s lives better.
But like other segments of the world of work and play, not all AI movements are received with open arms. Openai’s Teachers’ Guide to ChatGpt was released in November 2024, but undoubtedly came across criticism of larger issues with accuracy and data protection after the horse was bolted.
Jaffer founded Brisk after spending time with Edtech in different abilities. He spent over five years at the Chan Zuckerberg initiative, where he imagined and led the Team Building Notebook, an alternative to Google Docs aimed at improving student-teacher collaboration. In the end, the notebook didn’t take off. Especially because Google Docs does the job, but AI really changes the game for collaboration. That spirit was carried on the next swing of Jaffer founder BAT.
When using AI ring alarm bells, Brisk wants to muffle it with a measured approach: help rather than alternatives.
The company’s student writing inspector has not concluded that “this was written by ChatGpt.” The student’s work process begins with an on-screen video. It flags the student when he has something he has copy/pasted information or does something uncharacteristic about how they work otherwise, and watches with fast exercise. This is sent to a teacher who can assess whether it is a sign of copying from another location.
The most popular tool in the stack, “Target Feedback,” uses the Generated AI to read student essays (in Google Docs) and create comments tailored when uploaded or selected to suit your age, grading rubric, or other standards. Teachers can review and edit comments before something is shared with students (in the best case scenario, they do that rather than simply shifting without supervision).
Whether AI takes on the job of teaching and perhaps even better, Bessemer partner Kent Bennett, who led the investment, seems too clear to ignore the trendline.
“We have a reputation for this AI moment tracking areas like technology as a terror. This reputation often arises because the high value workflow in this environment includes human language and legacy software couldn’t handle it, so LLM can change.”
“[But] One of the biggest surprises I had when I looked into Ed-Tech that powered AI was that educators not only tolerate AI, but were actively seeking it,” he said.
Looking forward to it, Brisk will be building more immersive tools beyond expansion. Later this year, we will switch between new web platforms to “align and natively work within an active environment.” Jaffer said it includes new resources and activities.
Brisk wants to offer more “multimodal” integration. These include the ability for students to submit image-based work in addition to textbooks for evaluation. A “podcast” function that generates audio versions that explain documents and more.
Source link
