East Ventures leads $1.6m round of AI-backed language learning firm

Singapore-based edtech startup T-Lab has secured US$1.6 million in a seed funding round led by East Ventures.

K3 Ventures, Blue Elephant Capital, and Plug & Play also participated in the round.

Photo credit: T-Lab

The startup, which provides Chinese language classes mainly for the Southeast Asian and US markets, will use the fresh capital to strengthen its research and development division and enhance its curriculum to provide better Chinese educational resources.

T-Lab uses AI gamification to stimulate students’ interest in its courses. The company says that its flagship offering, Linnet Chinese, is one of the world’s first live and AI-backed course teaching systems.

Teachers can create interactive courseware and track students’ progress effectively by using T-Lab’s learning management system, while parents can use it to monitor their children’s learning progress based on the performance analyses and study reports available on the startup’s app.

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“Despite the mushrooming of online Chinese teaching institutes nowadays, there are still very few applications with AI courses that interact with students’ individual learning needs,” said Gin Zhang, co-founder of T-Lab.