math-education
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The 40-Year-Old Quiz Company Trying to Become the Operating System for Learning
Renaissance began with a reading quiz built in a Wisconsin basement. Four decades and a string of acquisitions later, it is betting that the next big classroom product is not another app, but a connected path from assessment to action.
Darsel
Darsel is an education-technology nonprofit that teaches K-12 math over the messaging apps students already have. Instead of an app or a laptop, students practice curriculum-aligned questions through SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger, and an AI-powered chatbot delivers hints, explanations, and personalized practice while auto-grading homework and reporting progress to teachers. Founded by Stanford MBA and MIT alum Abdulhamid Haidar during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Darsel has grown from a spring-break prototype to a platform used across Jordan, India, and Nigeria, reaching hundreds of thousands of students who have answered hundreds of millions of math questions.
National Math Stars
National Math Stars is a U.S. nonprofit that finds mathematically extraordinary second- and third-graders from all communities and commits to supporting them for up to a decade - through high school graduation. Each selected student receives more than $100,000 in mentorship, advanced coursework, STEM summer experiences, family advising, and community, at no cost to families. Founded in 2023 by former Bain consultant Ilana Walder-Biesanz and seeded with $16.5 million from Carina Initiatives and the Polynera Fund, the organization aims to build a diverse pipeline of talent capable of reaching the frontiers of math and science.
Ilana Walder-Biesanz
Ilana Walder-Biesanz is the founder and CEO of National Math Stars, a nonprofit that finds mathematically extraordinary children as early as second and third grade and gives each of them a decade of mentorship, advising, and funding worth more than $100,000. A child prodigy herself who took college courses at 13 and finished her undergraduate degree at 19, she pairs an engineer's rigor with a theater critic's flair. Before building National Math Stars she was a product manager at Yahoo, a Bain consultant, a Gates Cambridge Scholar, a Fulbright researcher of German opera staging, and a working opera critic. In December 2025, Jeff and Lauren Sanchez Bezos named her one of five recipients of a $5 million Courage & Civility Award.
Kyron Learning
Kyron Learning is an AI education company building an interactive video platform that turns recorded lessons into two-way tutoring conversations. Teachers record instruction once; the platform's conversational AI then understands what a learner types or says, detects misconceptions in real time, and serves the matching teacher response - approximating one-on-one tutoring at roughly a tenth of the cost of a live tutor. Founded in 2022 by former Google Cloud AI VP Rajen Sheth and Qwiklabs founder Enis Konuk, the public benefit company raised a $14.6M Series A in December 2023 to open its platform to any learning provider.
Manan Khurma
Manan Khurma is the founder and chairman of Cuemath, an online math learning platform that teaches K-12 students across 80+ countries through live 1-on-1 classes. An IIT Delhi engineer who started teaching JEE math in his second year of college, Khurma has spent two decades trying to make a billion kids fluent in mathematics.
Vicky Wang
Vicky Wang is the founder and CEO of WuKong Education, a Silicon Valley-based online learning platform serving 300,000+ families across 118 countries. She built the company from Auckland, New Zealand in 2016 into a Series B-backed edtech brand with 4,000 employees, offering Chinese language, math, and English programs for students aged 3-18. Recognized by Fortune China as one of the Most Influential Business Women in 2021 and 2022, named among HolonIQ's 144 global EdTech Women Leaders, and awarded the 2024 Cognia School of Distinction, Wang is redefining how the world's children learn Mandarin and mathematics.
Anurupa Ganguly
Anurupa Ganguly is the founder and CEO of Prisms, a spatial learning platform that uses virtual reality to teach core math and science to middle and high school students. A former math and physics teacher with degrees from MIT and Boston University, she built Prisms after a decade-plus in education leadership at Boston Public Schools and the NYC Department of Education. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz with $18.4M raised, Prisms now reaches 300,000+ students across 300+ school districts in 35 states, delivering measurable gains in algebra and science comprehension through embodied, problem-driven VR experiences.