Lithuanian ed-tech Leya AI raises €1M to improve its language learning tool

Vilnius-based ed-tech Leya AI raises €1M in a pre-seed round from Czech V-Sharp Venture Studio, Finnish investment company Inventure, Latvian BADideas.fund, and several business angels.

Founded in 2020 by Mindaugas Bruzas (an investor and a former board member of Lithuanian multilingual event translation solution Interactio) and Donatas Tamošauskas (a former employee of Vinted and Singapore-based fintech startup FinGenesis), Leya AI is a platform with a personal AI сoach that provides real-time English language speaking practice and feedback like a human tutor would. Users can learn English through fun games and personalised lessons. 

Known as Oxus.AI until June 2023, the startup's main product was the language analytics solution for sales teams. After that, Leya AI launched its new beta version, and now it has 4,5K users in over 100 countries.

Leya AI will use the investment to improve its AI English Tutor product. It will also hire new talent for product and engineering departments. The company plans to expand beyond English and other language tutoring and apply its product to various areas of life coaching, such as recommendations on how to lose weight, become a high-level sales professional, succeed in job interviews, etc.

The startup's previous Baltic backers include Lithuanian 70V and Firstpick, Estonian Startup Wise Guys, and business angels.

Launched in April 2022 by Raimonds Kulbergs, the BADideas.fund focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage startups from the Baltics and CEE region. The typical ticket size is €100K. The fund has more than 40 business angels, founders, executives, and employees from Bolt, Vimeo, Printify, PandaDoc, Pipedrive, Breezit, Recruitlab, Lande, Fuel Finance, Rapidworks, and others.