STEALTHY SOCRATIC: Last week, Google disclosed that it acquired Socratic, a New York-based developer of an online question-and-answer community and educational content library designed for students, and relaunched the tool as an AI-powered mobile learning app. Terms of the deal, which happened last year, were not disclosed.
Founded in 2013, Socratic had raised $7.5 million in venture capital—a $1.5 million seed round followed by a $6 million Series A. Initially, the tool offered as an online community where users can pose and answer questions, and share online learning resources that can be upvoted or downvoted based on their relevance. That version of the tool was shuttered in August 2018, the company announced.
The newest iteration of Socratic is a mobile app that allows students to take a photo of a question, and get videos, tutorials and other resources from the web that help them understand the underlying concepts to solve the problem. The app also supports speech recognition so users can also ask questions via voice.
This acquisition marks a homecoming of sorts for Socratic’s co-founder and former CEO, Christopher Pedregal, who was a product manager at Google before leaving in 2012 to start the company.
