While major tech companies and emerging startups are leveraging generative AI to create software and hardware for children, many of these experiences are limited to text or voice, which may not fully engage young users. Three former Google employees are addressing this challenge with Sparkli, their new generative AI-powered interactive application.
Sparkli was co-founded last year by Lax Poojary, Lucie Marchand, and Myn Kang. As parents, Poojary and Kang observed difficulty in fully satisfying their children’s curiosity or providing captivating answers to their questions.
“Children are inherently curious; my son often asked about things like how cars work or why it rains. My initial approach was to use ChatGPT or Gemini to explain these concepts to a six-year-old, but that still resulted in a wall of text. What kids truly desire is an interactive experience. This fundamental insight was the driving force behind founding Sparkli,” Poojary shared with TechCrunch during a call.
Before Sparkli, Poojary and Kang previously co-founded Touring Bird, a travel aggregator, and Shoploop, a video-centric social commerce app, both within Google’s internal startup incubator, Area 120. Poojary later moved to work on shopping initiatives at Google and YouTube. Marchand, Sparkli’s CTO, was also a co-founder of Shoploop and continued her career at Google.
“Fifty years ago, if a child asked what Mars looked like, we might have shown them a picture,” Poojary explained. “Ten years ago, we might have shown them a video. With Sparkli, our aim is for children to actively interact with and experience what Mars is like.”
The startup noted that traditional educational systems often lag in teaching contemporary concepts. Sparkli seeks to educate children on subjects such as design thinking, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship through AI-powered learning “expeditions.”
The application allows users to delve into predefined topics across various categories or pose their own questions to generate a personalized learning path. Additionally, the app highlights a new topic daily to encourage continuous learning. Children can choose to either listen to generated audio or read the text. Chapters within a topic incorporate a blend of audio, video, images, quizzes, and games. The app also offers