EdTech Polymath Raises $1M to Gamify Math Learning

Polymath, an educational technology startup that gamifies mathematics for children, announced a $1 million pre-seed funding round on Monday. Co-led by Blackbird Ventures and GD1, the investment includes participation from angel investor Liam Don, the chief technology officer at ClassDojo.

The platform aims to bridge the engagement gap between traditional education and the high-interest digital environments of games like Roblox or Minecraft. By integrating adaptive learning algorithms into a virtual sandbox world, the company seeks to maintain student focus through interactive challenges.

The genesis of the project lies in the observations of co-founder and CEO Sophie Silver. While studying developmental psychology and human learning at University College London, Silver worked as a nanny and found that conventional math instruction often failed to resonate with children. “The kids really did not enjoy maths, and so I would start to invent games, mainly with cards or dice, to try and motivate them to do their multiplication or whatever they needed to do,” Silver noted. She concluded that standard teaching methods were not aligned with natural cognitive processes.

Inside the Polymath virtual environment, children customize avatars and interact with a digital landscape that requires mathematical competency to navigate:

• Resource Management: Players must calculate dimensions and quantities of materials like wood blocks to construct buildings.
• Critical Thinking: In-game characters, such as shopkeepers, may present incorrect pricing, requiring students to identify errors in arithmetic.
• Adaptive Difficulty: An algorithm tracks student progress to deliver personalized questions, identifying knowledge gaps while preventing cognitive overload.

Co-founder and CTO Christian Silver highlighted the platform’s focus on logic, stating that the game creates scenarios where students must verify information to succeed. Beyond individual play, the platform offers a classroom mode that enables teachers to monitor student performance in real time, even in environments with limited device availability.

For home use, parents can access the “Polymath Relate” app to review detailed progress reports and specific answers provided by their children. While the platform allows for multiplayer connections via friend codes, it excludes chat functions to prioritize safety.

Launched in January 2023 through the Startmate accelerator in New Zealand, Polymath has already gained traction across several U.S. states, including Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, and Virginia, as well as internationally in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. Looking ahead, the company plans to introduce more collaborative gameplay features and expand its curriculum, alongside future monetization through purchasable avatar assets. The app is currently available for free on web, iOS, and Android.