Medly AI secures $8 million to place an AI tutor in front of every student taking exams in the UK.

      Often, the most authentic projects arise from the gaps we notice in our personal lives or in the society we inhabit. Perhaps this should be our societal focus: to leverage all available technology to tackle issues that were nearly impossible to solve previously.

      Medly AI, an exam-prep platform based in London created by two former NHS doctors, has secured an $8 million seed funding round led by Felix Capital, with previous investors Eka Ventures and Ada Ventures also participating.

      A group of angel investors joined the round, including InvestEngine CEO Andrey Dobrynin, Creator Fund venture partner Al Giles, LearnLaunch general partner Jean Hammond, and Episode 1 general partner Hector Mason.

      This funding follows a £1.7 million round announced in February 2025, also led by Eka, and a government contract that is arguably the more intriguing of the two.

      In June, Medly was selected as one of eight providers from a pool of 53 applicants for the AI Tutoring Tools Pioneers Programme, operated by the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology in collaboration with the Department for Education.

      Each selected winner is awarded £300,000 excluding VAT for research contracts that will run until 31 March 2027, with the goal of improving academic achievement among disadvantaged students in England. Other selected companies include Pearson, ElevenLabs, and Eedi.

      Dr. Paul Jung and Dr. Kavi Samra first met at age 11 in their initial year of secondary school, and both eventually studied medicine at UCL. Jung, who grew up in Northolt, holds a doctorate in psychiatric neuroscience; Samra, from a council estate in Slough, served as an honorary fellow at UCL Medical School.

      However, neither could afford private tutoring as children, shaping the company’s origin story and its market thesis.

      The product provides practice answers and clarifies where points were allocated, utilizing a conversational interface instead of a traditional worksheet.

      Medly claims it operates on a unique blend of seven large language models calibrated to recognize different learning styles and tailor feedback accordingly. Its handwriting recognition feature enables students to use a stylus on a tablet, which is particularly significant in subjects like maths and chemistry, where the process is crucial to finding the correct answer.

      The platform supports GCSEs, A-levels, and the IB in the UK, and has recently incorporated the SAT for U.S. students, with plans to include APs and ACTs before the year concludes.

      It also aims to develop its own models for marking and pedagogy specifically for the UK and EEA, rather than relying indefinitely on general-purpose models.

      In terms of outcomes, Medly reports that 74% of students using the platform for last summer's GCSEs improved by at least one grade, and 41% enhanced their grades by two or more. These figures are sourced from a survey of their users rather than an independent evaluation.

      The company claims the most significant subject improvements were 46% and 43%, though its own website credits the former to English Literature, while the announcement links it to Physics.

      Similar caveats apply to growth figures. Medly states it has exceeded 400,000 users in the UK, a number that stands in contrast to the “300,000+ students” its consumer site currently advertises.

      Exam students reportedly spend about an hour daily on the platform, with nearly a million messages exchanged each day.

      In June, three team members released a preprint analyzing 32,534 double-marked GCSE responses across 328 questions and five subjects. Their findings indicate that leading off-the-shelf models align with examiners at least as closely as two examiners agree with one another.

      This study focused on general-purpose models instead of Medly’s own marking system and has not undergone peer review. A randomized controlled trial involving over 1,000 students from lower-performing schools has been completed but is yet to be published.

      “Nearly a third of 11 to 16-year-olds receive some form of private tutoring,” Jung noted. “For those who can afford it, it’s a significant advantage. For those who can’t, it reinforces the existing disparities.”

      Angela Chou, the lead investor from Felix Capital, emphasized the founders’ personal backgrounds and the rapid pace of growth they’ve achieved.

      Ada Ventures, which supported the pre-seed through its Inclusive Alpha fund, has remained invested, as has Eka, whose founder Jon Coker mentioned being “impressed by the speed of progress.”

      The educational technology landscape is becoming increasingly crowded, with Smartschool providing a math reasoning engine to U.S. districts and a rising number of startups betting that education-specific models will outperform general chatbots in classrooms.