Kinnu Ltd., an education technology startup using generative artificial intelligence to create content for adult learners, has raised $6.5 million in a new funding round announced today.

The round was led by LocalGlobe and Cavalry Ventures and saw participation from Spark Capital and Jigsaw, plus angel investors, including Google Ventures’ Tom Hulme and Snyk Inc. founder Guy Podjarny.

Founded in 2021, London-based Kinnu’s mission is to give everyone the power to learn anything they want. To do this, it has created a generative AI-powered learning engine that sets out to rebalance the concentration of asset value away from educational content.

Instead, it’s more focused on the technology that enables learners acquire and retain knowledge. That technology is based on the idea that education in the post-AI world will push users to ask what, how and why we learn. Kinnu believes that the traditional one-size-fits-all curriculum will soon become a thing of the past.

Kinnu’s platform uses generative AI as one part of a three-pronged approach to content creation. First, human experts create a course outline or pathway. That’s fed into Kinnu’s large language models, similar to those that power OpenAI LP’s ChatGPT, which identify the main idea of each course and create relevant revision questions in various formats, such as multiple choice. Kinnu then makes these AI-powered educational courses available through its mobile application.

Kinnu co-founder and Chief Executive Christopher Kahler (pictured, center, alongside co-founders Abraham Muller and Hanna Celina) believes there’s a huge opportunity for AI-powered learning that’s focused on accelerating the pace of knowledge acquisition.

“Ten years ago, online learning experienced a boom because it democratized access to content,” Kahler said. “The next frontier is democratizing access to the mechanism of how we learn, from quantum mechanics and Chaucer to idioms and soft skills adapted to the learner’s own pace and ability. It’s this that excites us.”

LocalGlobe Partner Suzanne Ashman said the education industry is undergoing a transformation in the way people learn knowledge and skills. “From LocalGlobe’s first meeting with Kinnu’s co-founders, it was clear that their knowledge acquisition and assessment approach could deliver huge leaps forward in learning productivity and give learners more space to focus on applying knowledge,” she said.

Photos: Kinnu