StudySmarter

Founded in 2018 by Christian Felgenhauer, Maurice Khudhir, Simon Hohentanner, and Till Soehlemann, StudySmarter is a revision content marketplace and learning productivity platform powered by AI and natural language processing technologies. The platform recommends relevant revision content based on users’ study goals, the content they contribute, and their demographics to provide ongoing, adaptive recommendations to support and extend learning.

The platform hosts study and lesson plans created by users alongside content created by verified educators and publishers and offers users tools that convert contributed content (e.g. lecture slides, revision notes) into interactive study aids (e.g. flashcards, revision exercises). Users can choose whether or not to share the content they create with other learners in the StudySmarter community. The platform is topic agnostic, covering a diverse range of subjects.

In line with its mission of becoming the world's largest content-agnostic learning platform, the company launched the StudySmarter Originals feature in 2021, which contains custom content created in collaboration with select educators.

StudySmarter is offered free of charge. The company’s revenue streams include advertising and partnerships. Initially targeted at the higher education market, the platform has expanded to K-12 with plans to enter the corporate learning space as well. As of May 2021, the platform had more than 1.5 million learners split equally between higher education and K-12. The company’s main markets are German-speaking countries in Europe, but rolled out its platform to more regions globally including the US, UK, South Africa, Singapore, Indonesia, Canada, and Ireland.

In May 2021, StudySmarter raised USD 15 million in a Series A funding round towards product development and the platform’s global expansion efforts. The company plans to expand into more than 12 countries over the next 12 months including key markets such as the UK, the US, Brazil, India, Indonesia, France, the Nordics, Spain, and Russia. The company raised an additional USD 16 million (approximately EUR 13.8 million) as part of its Series A funding round. The investment extension was led by Goodwater Capital and brings its total Series A funding to USD 31 million. The fresh funding will be allocated to its international growth efforts.