Oboe, a learning startup from Anchor co-founders and former Spotify execs Nir Zicherman and Michael Mignano, said today it has raised $16 million in Series A funding led by a16z, with participation from existing investors Eniac, Haystack, Offline, and Factorial. The round also saw investments from individuals such as Adam D’Angelo, Garry Tan, Lenny Rachitsky, Mati Staniszewski, Mikey Shulman, Jared Hecht, and M.G. Siegler.
That platform, which officially launched in September, allows users to define a learning goal and use AI to create a course for them.
The startup’s fundraise comes three months after the app’s launch and a year after it raised a $4 million seed round. Zicherman said the reason behind the fresh round is to fuel growth at scale.
“We want to reach billions of people who want to learn about new topics, and it is a very big opportunity,” he told TechCrunch over a call. “We need to execute faster and reach a larger audience at scale to achieve this vision.”
“We have a team of successful consumer product builders that can execute well, which gives us an edge over other startups in the market,” he added.
Bryan Kim, a partner at a16z, said that he was impressed by how fast Oboe started generating content on a topic and didn’t make users wait behind a loading indicator.
“We have had a thesis around how AI-aided learning can help people explore new topics and have been looking for the right company. After Oboe launched, we tried it and loved the product. We wanted to back a founder who was ambitious, flexible in adopting different form factors, and understood AI to build a big platform. We found that in Oboe,” he told TechCrunch over a call.
The company is making changes to its core course-generation experience, as well. Earlier, Oboe generated different text and audio formats for users in different styles. Plus, it capped course generation based on the payment plan.
With the new version, the app will first understand your goal and then generate chapters based on that to help you learn about those topics. What’s more, users will see other modalities like quizzes appear within the course material seamlessly. For some courses, Oboe will also generate flashcards for you to easily remember course materials.
In terms of audio, instead of having to choose between a podcast format and a lecture format, the company generates a podcast for you and changes its tone based on the learning material and other signals from users.
Zicherman said that the company observed that there is a high demand among users to learn about STEM topics (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). The startup has worked on sourcing the best material for these topics, including programming.
He said that good teachers decide what is the best way of learning for students and the company is taking that approach of designing courses for learners.
Oboe is revamping its pricing model to give unlimited course generation to users.
However, if they want to dive deeper into a topic, they can pay $15 a month ($144 per year) to access more course chapters. There is also a $40 per month ($384 per year) Pro plan, which gives unlimited chapter access and allows users to export or download courses for consumption outside Oboe. The startup said this is suitable for students who want to take printouts of the study material and consume it offline.
Zicherman said that right now Oboe is offering courses in English, but it wants to reach different parts of the world better with localized courses and language support. The platform is currently available on the web, with mobile support planned for the future.
In the last few years, multiple tools, including Google’s NotebookLM and ex-Google employees’ Huxe, allow you to enter a prompt to get a podcast episode to explore a topic. While these are one-off generations, Oboe’s approach is to let you dive deeper into the topic with chapter-based learning.
