According to Sifted, Norwegian edtech platform WeWillWrite just raised €2m last week and is selling its interactive writing platform to American schools, where students compete in teams on content leaderboards without using AI to write their texts. In Copenhagen, startup Alice raised €4.2m in May for its AI tutor after going through Y Combinator, offering note-taking and quiz creation starting at $8.33 monthly. Berlin-based Knowunity secured a massive €27m Series B in June for its TikTok-style learning companions featuring SchoolGPT, founded in 2020 by four 17-year-olds still in school. Meanwhile, Paris-based PyxiScience raised €2m in May for AI grading of handwritten papers, Munich’s Edurino got €17m for early-learning tools, and imagi partnered with Lovable and OpenAI to bring AI to classrooms.
The cheating problem that won’t go away
Here’s the thing: everyone in edtech is desperately trying to position AI as an enhancement rather than a replacement for learning. WeWillWrite’s CEO Daniel Senn is practically shouting from the rooftops that they “don’t let students use AI to write their texts.” But let’s be real – the cat’s already out of the bag. Students everywhere are using ChatGPT and other tools to do their homework. The whole vibe coding debate shows how messy this gets. Why spend years learning programming fundamentals when AI can generate functional code? Except… anyone who’s actually used these tools knows they make mistakes, sometimes spectacular ones. So maybe we’ll still need human coders to clean up the mess? It’s the same with writing – AI can produce competent but soulless prose that lacks original thought.
Europe’s edtech moment is finally here
What’s fascinating is that AI might actually be Europe’s ticket to edtech relevance. For years, the sector struggled to compete with US and Asian giants. Now we’re seeing serious money flowing into European AI education tools. €27m for Knowunity? That’s not pocket change. And the founders were 17-year-old students when they started – talk about understanding your user base. The diversity of approaches is impressive too: from WeWillWrite’s gamified writing battles to PyxiScience’s grading automation and Alice’s study tools. They’re all attacking different pain points in the education system. But I wonder – are we just creating a bunch of specialized tools that schools can’t afford to bundle together? At $8.33 monthly per student for just one service, the costs could quickly become prohibitive for entire school districts.
The real win might be boring
The most promising application might be the least glamorous one. Teachers reporting that parent emails are one of their most stressful tasks? That’s the kind of problem AI can actually solve without ethical dilemmas. An AI email assistant could handle routine communications, schedule meetings, and filter urgent messages. It’s not sexy, but it addresses genuine teacher burnout. Similarly, PyxiScience’s grading tool doesn’t replace teachers – it just eliminates the soul-crushing tedium of marking hundreds of papers. These are the applications that might actually stick because they support educators rather than trying to replace the human element of teaching. The challenge will be convincing budget-constrained schools that these tools are worth the investment when they’re already stretched thin.
What happens when the novelty wears off?
Remember when every company was rushing to build “the Netflix of education” or “Uber for tutoring”? Many of those initiatives fizzled out. The current AI edtech boom feels different because the technology is genuinely transformative, but the fundamental business challenges remain. Student engagement is notoriously fickle – today’s hot learning app becomes tomorrow’s digital clutter. And with AI evolving so rapidly, today’s €27m platform might be obsolete in two years if OpenAI or Google decides to build similar functionality into their mainstream products. The startups that survive will need to prove they’re creating lasting educational value, not just riding the AI hype wave. Because at the end of the day, education isn’t about technology – it’s about learning. And that’s still a deeply human process.
