Engageli

Engageli was founded in Palo Alto in 2020 by investor/operator Dan Avida, Stanford professor Serge Plotkin, Coursera co-founder Daphne Koller and former 2U/Trilogy executive Jamie Nacht Farrell; some databases also credit Gideon Avida and Joe Peter as founding contributors. Built during the abrupt move to remote education, it rejected meeting-software metaphors in favor of persistent classroom tables, instructor visibility, embedded polls/quizzes/notes, group work and engagement analytics. The platform now combines live/hybrid Virtual Classroom, asynchronous Playback Rooms, Studio course authoring and an AI Classroom Suite/AILA grounded in instructor content. It serves higher education, K-12 and corporate L&D, integrates beside major LMS/SSO systems, and remains active. A $14.5m seed and $33m Series A total $47.5m; the source row's $14.48m/one-round figure captured only the seed. Current customer logos include DeVry, Coventry, University of Nicosia, Taejae, Stride and People Untapped. Company studies claim retention rising 78% to 92%, 18% higher completion and 14% higher test scores in cited deployments; these are vendor-selected outcome studies, not universal benchmarks.

Founding story

Educators and edtech operators used the pandemic's forced remote-learning experiment to design a collaborative online classroom from first principles instead of adapting generic videoconferencing.

Business model

Institutional B2B SaaS for synchronous, asynchronous and hybrid education/training.

Custom annual platform licensing based on institution, users/enrollment, modalities and services; implementation/customer-success services; no public list price.

Traction

Named customers span DeVry University, Coventry University, University of Nicosia, Taejae University, Stride and People Untapped. Company reports case-specific 92% retention, 18% higher completion and 14% higher test scores, plus a separate active-learning study claiming 54% higher test scores, 13x speaking and 16x nonverbal engagement; study design and generalizability need review.

Latest developments

2026 positioning emphasizes multimodal learning, AILA/AI Classroom Suite, course-authoring automation, K-12 virtual-school funding and corporate L&D while the active product/support site remains current.