Concept Ventures leads the pre-seed round for a learning app focused on professional exams and upskilling, with backing from former Depop CEO Maria Raga and Helsing Co-Founder Torsten Reil
Mindmax Co-Founders Daniel Zohar and Ed Cooke previously worked together at Memrise.
Mindmax has raised £2.5 million in pre-seed funding for an AI tutor that lets learners interrupt lessons, ask questions and work through material in real-time conversation.
Concept Ventures, which also backed ElevenLabs, led the round. Redrice Ventures, Daybreak Ventures and Lerer Hippeau participated, alongside angel investors including Maria Raga, former Chief Executive Officer of Depop, and Torsten Reil, Co-Founder of Helsing.
Mindmax was founded by Ed Cooke and Daniel Zohar, who previously worked together on language learning app Memrise.
Cooke, Co-Founder of Mindmax, says: “We created Mindmax to help people boost their brains rather than be replaced - and to make that process a pleasure, not a drama.”
An AI tutor learners can interrupt
Mindmax’s first product targets professional exam preparation and skills development. Learners set a goal, and the app plans short daily lessons that adapt to their answers.
Sessions take place through conversation with an AI tutor. Users can interrupt to clarify a point, ask a question or redirect the lesson toward something they have not understood. Visual explanations and illustrations appear during the conversation.
According to the company, lessons reflect a learner’s existing knowledge, goals and responses, with each session building on previous work. The app is designed to remember mistakes and identify material that still needs attention.
Its coach, Em, also provides daily check-ins. Mindmax describes this as a way to bring learners back when they have stopped engaging with their plan.
The website presents a broader range of possible goals, including career development, exams and hobbies, while the funding announcement identifies professional exams and upskilling as the initial product focus.
Two different routes into learning
Cooke co-founded Memrise, while Zohar worked with him for more than a decade as its Chief Technology Officer. Mindmax says the language learning app reached more than 80 million users worldwide.
Cooke’s background includes memory techniques and the title “Grand Master of Memory.” According to the company, he can memorize a deck of cards in under a minute, using techniques that turn information into vivid imagined scenes.
Zohar followed a different route. He learned to code at seven, began taking university-level courses at 14 and left school without qualifications at 17. He later founded PicBadges, a platform for adding badges to Facebook profile pictures, before his work at Memrise.
Describing his experience of formal education, Zohar says: “At school, I was a round peg trying to fit into a square shaped system. It was a disaster and I left without qualifications.”
Those backgrounds underpin the founders’ emphasis on learning through interaction and adapting sessions to the individual. Zohar describes curiosity as “the greatest fuel for learning” and argues that learners need opportunities to ask questions as they work through unfamiliar material.
The claims behind the learning pitch
Mindmax positions the app as a response to what its founders call “cognitive surrender,” their concern that people are handing too much of their thinking to AI.
Their proposal is to use AI to support the work of learning: asking questions, resolving misunderstandings and retaining information.
The company claims its personalized, interactive approach is more effective than classroom teaching or one-way video formats. The announcement does not provide comparative learning-outcome results, exam pass rates or retention measurements alongside that claim.
Investor Oliver Kicks, Partner at Concept Ventures, points to the founders’ previous work: “Ed and Daniel built something remarkable with Memrise, helping tens of millions of people learn languages.”
Mindmax describes its tutor as an adaptive app for iPhone and Android, with an App Store download available through its website.
ETIH Innovation Awards 2027 open for entries
The ETIH Innovation Awards 2027 are now open for entries, with 26 categories recognising companies, institutions, projects and individuals making a measurable impact across education technology. The global awards span AI in education, digital learning, higher education, skills and workforce, inclusion, education operations, evidence and impact, with entries managed through ETIH’s new online awards platform.
Entries are open worldwide, with the early-bird deadline on Friday 18 December 2026 and the final entry deadline on Friday 26 February 2027 at 23:59 UK time.
Explore the 2027 categories and judging criteria, read the How to Enter guide or start an entry through the ETIH Innovation Awards 2027 platform.
