Magic School - Bringing the Power of AI to Education

Company & Team Introduction

Magic School is an AI-powered assistant designed to save teachers 10+ hours a week and help the 44% of K-12 teachers in the US who feel burnt out with their massive workload. The company was founded in 2023 by Columbia graduate and lifelong teacher/principal Adeel Khan. After learning about the power of LLMs using Github co-pilot to help him code, he immediately realized how LLMs could also be a game-changing technology for our education system. The company’s mission is to lighten the load for teachers so they can save their energy for when they truly need to do their most important work: in the classroom, helping their students. Magic School is headquartered in Denver, Colorado and has scaled its team to ~13 employees.

Product Overview

Magic School’s platform offers over 60 AI-enabled tools to help teachers save massive amounts of time. Some of the company’s most loved tools include its AI-enabled lesson planning tool, unit planning tool, rubric generator, class newsletter tool, Behaviour Intervention Plan and Individualized Education Plan builder, and multiple-choice quiz generator. Magic School has also taken a unique approach to building out its platform; rather than choosing a “best” model and applying it across its entire toolset, the company has diligently equipped each tool with the most performant LLM for the task, whether it be Open AI’s GPT-3.5/GPT-4, Anthropic’s Claude Models, Google’s Gemini models, or others. The company has displayed incredible product velocity as its team has built 60+ tools for their platform in a year, routinely releasing multiple tools a week.

Total Addressable Market

Not only is the total addressable market for AI education already massive, with P&S Intelligence estimating the market opportunity is already as large as $5.44B. In addition to the already enormous opportunity, the AI-enabled EdTech vertical is forecasted to expand at a blistering 47% CAGR through 2030, swelling Magic School’s market opportunity to north of $55B by the end of the decade.

Business Model & The Numbers

Magic School uses a simple freemium 3-tier SaaS business model. The company offers a generous free tier that gives access to all 60+ different tools to fuel platform adoption, with the ability to upgrade to their Magic School Plus tier for $12.99/month or $99.96/year, which gives users additional functionality like unlimited AI generations, unlimited student rooms and usage, 1-click exports to LMS’ such as Google and Microsoft, and early access to new tools and features. Magic Schools’ Enterprise tier that they sell to entire schools and districts includes additional safety and compliance features such as advanced moderation and monitoring tools to ensure student safety, product analytics to better understand how teachers and students are interacting with the platform, GDPR, FERPA, COPPA and Ed-law 2D compliant, single sign-on, dedicated support, and district-specific platform customizations with discounted pricing based on the number of users.

Traction

Magic School's early traction has been incredible; it is one of the fastest-growing EdTech platforms ever. The company has spread like wildfire through the US and global education system, with over 2M educators on the platform worldwide from over 10,000 schools across the US. Additionally, Magic School has forged partnerships with over 3,500 schools and district partners worldwide. Among those using the platform are Seattle Public Schools, KIPP Chicago Schools, and the Laguna Beach Unified School District. The company has also generated some serious buzz in the news as they’ve been featured in CBS, Wired, and TCEA.

Competitors

Magic School’s combination of first-mover advantage and lightning-fast product velocity has led the company to a highly favourable position in the underserved EdTech vertical. For starters, Magic School is more than 50% cheaper than ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) and Microsoft Co-pilot ($25/month) and is tailor-made specifically for educators, differentiating themselves from the aforementioned horizontal AI applications. Here is Magic School’s main EdTech-focused competitor:

School.ai - School AI was Founded in 2023 by serial entrepreneur Caleb Hicks. Previously Hicks was a co-founder of the well-known online coding school Bloom Institute of Technology, formerly known as Lambda School. School AI offers many tools that Magic School provides, such as BIP and IEP plans, a class newsletter, a multiple-choice quiz generator, a lesson plan generator, etc. In total, School AI’s platform includes 12 tools, a far cry from Magic School’s comprehensive 60+ tool offering and displays the stark contrast in product velocity between the 2 companies. School AI’s platform is now used in over 2,0000 classrooms worldwide, compared to Magic School, which had already expanded to over 10,000 classrooms by August 2023. School AI has yet to raise external capital and doesn’t offer a free tier or self-service payment options.

Funding

Magic School has raised 2 funding rounds since being founded in 2023. The company first raised a $2.4M seed round led by Range Capital from a combination of for-profit and non-profit entities such as Transcend Fund, Rethink Ventures, Gary Community Investments, and GSV Ventures and notable investors with deep expertise in the education vertical like Ted Dintersmith, Samyr Qureshi (co-founder, Knack), Niels Hoven (founder, Mentava), Rogers Jie Luo (founder & MP, Embedding VC) among participants in the round. After undergoing rapid growth following its initial seed funding, Magic School raised an impressive $17.9M Series A from Bain Capital Ventures and additional investors that were not disclosed.