Israel-based edtech platform TinyTap announced that it has raised $8.5 million from investors including Sequoia China, Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, Shima Capital, Polygon, GameFi Ventures, and others. TinyTap, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, will use the funding to to support TinyTap’s business expansion and accelerate development in the edtech space.
The investment will enable TinyTap to continue to expand its successful Web2 platform, which already serves over 9.2 million registered members, into an alternative Web3 education system that better values teachers by improving the earning opportunities available to them, and enables parents and communities to support and promote their preferred educational materials.
Yogev Shelly, CEO of TinyTap, commented: “Our Publisher NFTs genesis auctions demonstrated that the Web3 community is well suited and willing to support educators and educational content via this new powerful and equitable incentive system. By pairing educational content creators with interested promoters, we are able to benefit all parties fairly and take a significant step in our goal to put the power of learning back in the hands of educators, students, and the community.”
TinyTap launched its Web3 strategy in 2022 with two successful auctions of Publisher NFTs, which generated 243 ETH (approximately $352.000 at the times of the auction). Publisher NFTs are a new concept introduced by TinyTap to empower better, reward, and incentivize educational content creators and publishers.
Yat Siu, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Animoca Brands, commented: “Teachers and educators are among the most important content creators and contributors in society, and yet their wages typically do not reflect their critical importance. This is why we’re incredibly excited at the Web3 opportunities that TinyTap is exploring in the field of education. Having already succeeded in building a Web2 education platform, TinyTap is now supercharging its efforts using NFTs, making it possible for educators to generate equity from their work better and link up with co-publishers who can handle the promotion of their courses, all while offering students enhanced learning materials.”
TinyTap was founded in 2012 by Oren Elbaz and Yogev Shelly. TinyTap offers a games library with more than 250.000 activities made by educators and publishers including Sesame Street and Oxford University Press.
TinyTap that over a million families play monthly. Games are created by teachers worldwide on TinyTap, which enables the creation and sharing of educational games without having to code. Families and educators can create and play thousands of games for free or subscribe to unlock premium content and view learning data about their learners. 50% of each subscription revenue goes back to the teacher who created the games.
