Eedi Raises Significant Funding to Build Diagnostic Intelligence as a Global Public-Purpose Utility

Eedi expands its work in identifying misconceptions as critical public infrastructure for learning, with funding from LearnerStudio and the Gates Foundation.

LONDON & NEW YORK - September 15th - Eedi today announced significant new funding from the Gates Foundation and LearnerStudio to open source its Misconception Graph in partnership with Learning Commons, and to expand its coverage and use around the world.

Effective teaching and learning has to go beyond right and wrong: it also needs to shed light on the reasons why students struggle. For over a decade, Eedi has been building a map of these reasons: the Misconception Graph.

Consider an Eedi question that asks what number follows eighteen and nineteen. One of its wrong answers is tenteen - a child who picks it has misunderstood something real about how English builds number words. In a different language, a distractor like that one, translated literally, may lose its value as a diagnostic tool.

Containing thousands of mathematical constructs and misconceptions, Eedi has built and validated this graph through its own experience with real students, teachers, and classrooms around the world.

Diagnostic Intelligence of this kind is the critical substrate for learning in the age of AI. Independent, gold-standard RCTs have shown that this model of diagnosing misconceptions leads to significant and measurable learning gains. Separately, Eedi's work with frontier labs, including its published study with Google DeepMind, shows how LLMs can use Diagnostic Intelligence effectively and safely to improve learning outcomes.

To advance Eedi’s mission and impact, Eedi has published its Misconception Graph under an open Creative Commons License, making it available via Learning Commons. Moreover, Eedi will steward a new global effort to expand the map around the world, beginning with a multi-year effort across Sub-Saharan Africa, with more countries to be announced. Working with teachers and partners in the region, Eedi will test existing misconceptions with students, discover new ones, and build diagnostic questions that work in local languages and curricula. The aim is measurable gains in learning for one billion learners, and what Eedi learns will be added to the graph for everyone to use as public-purpose infrastructure. 

Contextualizing the graph to different learners and contexts around the world is essential to achieving impact at scale. Eedi's own experience working in the UK, the US, India, and other countries shows that not all misconceptions are universal. Testing the existing misconceptions, discovering new ones, and using them to build new innovations to drive measurable learning gains will require collective effort. Eedi is excited to spearhead this initiative with the support of the foundation and LearnerStudio.

CEO Ben Caulfield said: "We have spent eleven years building something no one else has, and we're giving it away. That may sound odd until you look at what's happening in classrooms around the world. Tools are being deployed at speed that can tell a child they're wrong but give them no insight into why. The fix isn't for every developer to spend another decade on this. It's for the map to exist once, openly, so everyone can build on it."

LearnerStudio has argued that education in the AI era needs public-purpose utilities: shared capability that serves individual learners and the public interest at the same time, run by organizations with the mandate, expertise, and capital to keep them going.

According to Gwen Baker, a Partner at LearnerStudio: "Eedi's tools give learners a research-based picture of the assets they bring to the learning process. We are thrilled to back the Eedi team, a rare mix of practical expertise, research rigor, and commitment to the common good."

About Eedi

Founded in 2015 by a teacher, a data scientist, and an entrepreneur, Eedi helps students build real mathematical understanding by finding and resolving the specific misconceptions behind their mistakes. Its diagnostic questions, AI tutor, and teacher insights are used in schools across the world, and its Diagnostic Engine powers assessment inside partner platforms. Learn more at https://eedi.com.

About LearnerStudio

LearnerStudio works to spark the change needed to reinvent American education and ensure young people are inspired and prepared to flourish in the Age of AI — in life, career, and democracy. It seeds ideas, funds innovators through grants and investments, and connects the people and organizations reimagining how we learn. Its investment in Eedi represents a broader effort to advance shared tools and infrastructure that can enable more individualized and responsive learning at scale.

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