Mindmax raises $3.3M pre-seed for a spoken AI tutor
Mindmax, built by Memrise's Ed Cooke and Daniel Zohar, raised $3.3M (£2.5M) in a pre-seed round led by Concept Ventures for a spoken AI tutor aimed at professional exams and new work skills, launching first in the US.
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London, United Kingdom
Mindmax, the London startup built by Memrise’s Ed Cooke and Daniel Zohar, has raised $3.3M (£2.5M) in pre-seed funding led by Concept Ventures for a spoken AI tutor aimed at professional exams and new work skills, according to Tech Funding News and Tech.eu.
Concept Ventures leads, with Depop and Helsing names alongside
The round was announced on November 5, 2026. Tech Funding News and The Next Web report $3.3M, and Tech.eu carries the same $3.3M in its headline and £2.5M in its story.
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Concept Ventures, a London fund that backed ElevenLabs early on according to The Next Web, led. Redrice Ventures, Daybreak Ventures and Lerer Hippeau joined, with two angels: Maria Raga, former CEO of Depop, and Torsten Reil, co-founder of Helsing.
Tech Funding News gives the use of funds as growth and technology development, and Tech.eu says the company will keep developing its AI models and personalized learning capabilities. Oliver Kicks, partner at Concept Ventures, said the founders have “an ability to design and deploy products that deliver learning experiences far superior to anything else on the market,” in comments reported by Tech Funding News.
From a claimed 80 million Memrise users to the exam room
Mindmax is an AI tutor for professional exams and new work skills. The learner talks to it in real time and can cut in with a question mid-explanation. The tutor answers with diagrams, illustrations, tests and reminders, and adapts to each learner’s level, goals and learning style. The app is live worldwide on the App Store and Google Play, with the US as its first launch market. The company’s website calls it “the learning coach in your pocket.”
The founders have shipped a learning app at scale before. Cooke and Zohar built Memrise, which claims over 80 million users according to Tech.eu, and The Next Web describes Zohar as its former CTO. The Mindmax team is eight people, six of them full-time, spread across Paris, Latvia, London and India, per Tech Funding News.
A language app and an exam coach are different businesses. A learner who skips a day of vocabulary practice loses little, while a candidate preparing for a professional qualification is working toward a date and a result. Bringing learners back day after day is the hard part of this business, and Cooke and Zohar have done it before at Memrise.
Cooke sizes the need in comments carried by Tech Funding News: “More than a billion people are going to need to change careers or upskill in the next decade.”
A $2.13 billion European market forecast to grow 25% a year
Grand View Research puts the European AI in education market at US$2,131.6 million in 2025 and estimates US$2,919.3 million for 2026. Its forecast reaches US$13,894.0 million by 2033, a 25.0% CAGR over 2026-2033 (Grand View Research Horizon, published November 4, 2025).
For a continent of workers facing the reskilling Cooke describes, $2.13 billion is a modest base. The growth rate is the stronger figure. On Grand View’s numbers the market in 2033 is more than six times its 2025 size, and a company raising a pre-seed in 2026 is building for that later, larger market.
Our fundraising data gives the round some scale. Marble Cognition’s $3.75M pre-seed, co-led by Heartcore Capital and Seedcamp on November 2, 2026, sits in the same bracket three days earlier, outside education. Within education, Sainaptic, which applies AI to exam marking and assessment, raised a €1.2M seed on October 13, 2026, led by Brighteye Ventures. Two AI exam companies got funded within four weeks of each other. One grades the test, the other coaches the candidate.
A London lead, a four-country team and American learners first
The lead fund is in London. The team works from Paris, Latvia, London and India, and The Next Web describes Mindmax as a London startup. The first launch market is the US. European money and a largely European team built the product, and US users get it first.
Mindmax hasn’t said which market comes after the US. Grand View’s 25.0% CAGR applies to Europe, so the second launch is the date to watch.
Experts on the content, no error rate yet
Tech Funding News notes that Mindmax hasn’t published an error rate for its tutor yet, and also reports that experts review the course content and that technical checks are in place. For an exam-prep product, that error rate is the number buyers will ask for. Watch for it, and let’s keep building European tutors that publish theirs.
