27 Jul 2026 4 min read Western Hemisphere

Brighteye and Day One lead Imagi's US$4.5M seed to teach vibe coding in schools

Imagi CEO Dora Palfi and CTO Beatrice Ionascu

Imagi, an edtech company based in Stockholm and New York, announced on July 23 that it raised US$4.5 million in an oversubscribed seed round to expand its platform for teaching K-12 students how to use artificial intelligence safely, including AI-assisted "vibe coding." The round was led by Brighteye Ventures and Day One Capital, with participation from FemInvest and We Are Human, the fund founded by Kahoot's creators. Angel investors include musician and entrepreneur Will.i.am, ElevenLabs founder Mati Staniszewski, former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke, Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso, and Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm. The new capital brings Imagi's total funding to US$5.5 million.

Founded in 2018 by CEO Dora Palfi and CTO Beatrice Ionascu, who met at Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Imagi gives teachers curriculum-based, supervised access to AI tools for students, with every prompt and AI response screened before it reaches a child. The company partners with Lovable, the AI "vibe-coding" platform that lets users build software through natural-language prompts, and with OpenAI, which is backing schools with US$1 million in credits. Imagi says the funding will go toward expanding into more US school districts, growing its teacher-training programs, hiring US-based staff, and building out compliance and research functions.

Market Context

Imagi's raise stands out against a broader pullback in K-12 edtech funding, which has fallen roughly 82% since 2021, from about US$16.7 billion that year to under US$3 billion in 2025, as investors grew wary of the sector following pandemic-era overinvestment. The number of new edtech founders has followed the same trajectory, dropping from roughly 10,500 in 2020 to about 645 in 2025. Against that backdrop, Imagi reports 700,000-plus students across 140 countries, more than 100 school districts in all 50 US states (including Hawaii's state education department), 30,000-plus educators on the platform, 30-fold year-over-year user growth, and a tripling of annual recurring revenue.

The round also rides a fast-growing classroom trend: "vibe coding," in which students describe what they want to build in plain language and AI tools generate the code, is spreading through US school districts as a lower-cost, more accessible entry point to computer science than traditional programming instruction. Imagi is also notable as a female-founded company in a segment where, according to data from the UK, the share of edtech funding going to female-founded or mixed teams slipped from 23% in 2022 to 17% in 2023.

The Signal

"Today's schoolchildren are the first generation who will never know a world without AI. This means AI education won't just be the new ICT, but the new literacy." — Dora Palfi, CEO and co-founder, Imagi

Regional Relevance

For the United States: Imagi's growth is now heavily concentrated in US classrooms, with partnerships spanning more than 100 school districts across all 50 states, including a statewide relationship with Hawaii's Department of Education, and a New York base of operations. The raise signals continued investor appetite for AI-safety infrastructure aimed at schools at a moment when districts nationwide are under pressure to adopt AI tools quickly while managing student-data privacy obligations under COPPA and FERPA. The involvement of high-profile US-based tech figures, including a former GitHub CEO, also underscores how AI literacy is increasingly viewed as core infrastructure for American K-12 education, not just an elective add-on.

For Sweden and the broader European edtech sector: Imagi's Stockholm roots, and backing from Brighteye Ventures, one of Europe's most active edtech-focused venture funds, reflect the Nordic region's continued role as a launchpad for global education technology companies, following a lineage that includes Kahoot. The deal offers a rare bright spot for European edtech investors navigating a sector-wide funding slowdown, and reinforces Stockholm's positioning as a hub for founders building AI-literacy tools with global, rather than purely domestic, ambitions.

The Other Side

Is US$4.5 million enough to compete as AI giants and school-focused incumbents move into the same space? Imagi's growth metrics are strong, but the sum is modest next to the resources of larger AI labs and established edtech players that could build competing classroom-safety layers directly into their own products, potentially squeezing out smaller intermediaries like Imagi.

Do content "guardrails" actually satisfy parents, regulators, and school boards wary of exposing children to generative AI? Imagi cites COPPA, FERPA, and GDPR compliance along with zero data retention, but as scrutiny of AI in classrooms intensifies, districts and parent groups may demand more independent verification than vendor-reported compliance claims before trusting a third-party platform with student interactions.

Is "vibe coding" a durable pedagogical shift or a passing trend? Prompt-based, AI-generated coding lowers the barrier to entry for computer science, but critics could argue it risks teaching students to prompt rather than to understand underlying logic and problem-solving, raising questions about whether the skill will hold long-term value as the AI tools themselves keep changing.