Owners
Edwin Technology the founder of AI service for studying of English - Edwin. The virtual teacher of Edwin uses modern technologies of adaptive training and a natural language understanding (NLU — Natural Language Understanding) in combination with quality pedagogical materials. Edwin courses are taught by the virtual teacher together with the qualified tutors that allows to make the personalized individual training available. The company is based in San Francisco and received financing from General Catalyst, Y Combinator, Google Assistant Investments Program and some other venture funds. For March, 2020 more than 800 thousand students worldwide already improved the English with Edwin.
History
2020: Merge to AI Buddy
On March 3, 2020 the AI Buddy company, the developer of the virtual tutor of English with artificial intelligence, announced merge to Edwin EdTech-startup. The companies will combine efforts in order that as much as possible children had an opportunity of productive training in English, thanks to practice of colloquial English with the virtual tutor equipped with artificial intelligence worldwide.
MyBuddy.ai develops the virtual tutor of Buddy which 'lives' in mobile application and gives to children the unlimited chance to practice colloquial English in playful way using voice technologies. The application for the beginning of March, 2020 was downloaded by more than 1 million users from all countries. The number of the paying pupils makes more than 17,000 and grows for 20% a month. The children learning English in Europe and Latin America and also children of immigrants in the USA use the application. It is in the lead in popularity in AppStore in Russia, Poland and Ukraine.
The Edwin command developed adaptive technology for training in language online and created a rate for preparation for delivery of the standardized tests of English. Training is provided with the help chat-bot Facebook and the teacher. For the beginning of March, 2020 more than 800 thousand students in Latin America, To Korea and Japan could already improve the English, practicing with Edwin.
Both companies pursue a common goal – to make training in English as to foreign (EFL) available due to use of AI technologies. Consolidation of efforts, resources and technologies does again formed company by one of leaders of the world market of services of training in English. The amount of this market reaches 80 billion dollars, and the potential audience contains 1 billion learning English around the world (according to the British Council, 2019).
The company formed as a result of merge will save the name MyBuddy.ai and also offices in San Francisco and Moscow. The command will continue to improve technology of the virtual tutor helping to practice colloquial English to children worldwide. More than 500 million school students try to learn English, but cannot begin to speak fluently in it because of insufficient practice of communication. The virtual voice tutor of English which will organically combine the solutions developed by MyBuddy.ai and Edwin now is capable to meet this lack.
We realized that we before merge created two parts of one solution: Buddy – training game on the basis of voice technologies, and Edwin – technologies of adaptive training and the training programs EFL. Together we will be able to offer a product for training in colloquial English and to construct large-scale business in this multi-billion market, told Dmitry Stavisky, the co-founder of Edwin and the managing director of MyBuddy.ai.
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All have personal motivating stories. My daughter had to learn to speak English when moving to the USA when she was 3 years old. She had to make huge efforts for studying of language, and I understood that it is a large-scale problem. For March, 2020 she in the first class of the American school and still plays and studies with Buddy, speaks Ivan Kryukov, the co-founder and the CEO of MyBuddy.ai
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The virtual voice tutor of Buddy can become the important tool and the assistant for teachers of EFL. Using this technology, actually, we automate a part of routine tasks of the teacher and we do training in English effective and available at the price. Communicating with Buddy children receive several additional hours of practice of informal conversation a week that is crucial for mastering of language, continues Dmitry Plotnikov, the co-founder and the director of the product MyBuddy.ai
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2016: Foundation of the company
The company was founded in 2016 by Dmitry Stavisky, the former CEO of LinguaLeo. The main office of the company is in San Francisco[1].