---
title: "Mindmax Raises £2.5M Pre-Seed Funding for an AI Tutor From Memrise Founders"
url: "https://bizztor.com/news/mindmax-raises-2-5m-pre-seed-funding-ai-tutor/"
author: "Bizztor"
author_url: "https://bizztor.com/author/bizztor/"
date_published: "2026-11-05T11:00:00.000Z"
date_modified: "2026-11-14T10:34:16.662Z"
category: "News"
description: "Concept Ventures led the $3.3M round for Ed Cooke and Daniel Zohar's London startup, with Helsing co-founder Torsten Reil among the angels."
publisher: "Bizztor"
---

# Mindmax Raises £2.5M Pre-Seed Funding for an AI Tutor From Memrise Founders

> Concept Ventures led the $3.3M round for Ed Cooke and Daniel Zohar's London startup, with Helsing co-founder Torsten Reil among the angels.

**Mindmax, a London AI tutoring startup from the people who built Memrise, has raised £2.5M ($3.3M) in a pre-seed round led by Concept Ventures.**

The round was announced on 5 November. Redrice Ventures, Daybreak Ventures and Lerer Hippeau also invested, along with angels Maria Raga, former chief executive of Depop, and Torsten Reil, co-founder of defence AI company Helsing.

[Mindmax](https://mindmax.it/) is an AI tutor for professional exam preparation and upskilling. Its app is live on the App Store and Google Play, with the US as its first launch market.

## Who are the Mindmax founders?

Ed Cooke co-founded Memrise, the language learning app that reached more than 80 million users. He became a Grand Master of Memory at 23 and coached journalist Joshua Foer to win the 2006 US Memory Championship.

Daniel Zohar was Memrise's chief technology officer for more than a decade. He left school at 17 without qualifications and earlier built PicBadges, which passed 15 million users.

The team has eight people, six of them full time, spread across London, Paris, Latvia and India.

## How does the Mindmax tutor work?

Learners talk to the tutor in real time. They can interrupt, ask questions and steer the lesson, rather than sitting through a fixed video or quiz.

The tutor draws diagrams and visual explanations, tests the learner and sends reminders. Lessons adapt to what the person already knows, their goal and the way they like to learn.

Mindmax says experts review course content and that technical checks are in place. It has not published error rates.

## What problem is Mindmax trying to solve?

Cooke argues that AI is encouraging people to hand their thinking over to machines. He says Mindmax is fighting fire with fire, using AI to make people better at learning rather than replacing the effort.

He also expects more than a billion people to need to change careers or upskill in the next decade. Zohar said many people think they are not smart when they simply have not found the right style of learning.

Oliver Kicks, partner at Concept Ventures, pointed to how many people the pair helped through Memrise. [Concept has published Cooke's account of working with the fund](https://concept.vc/repeat-founder) as part of its repeat-founder programme.

## What will the money pay for?

Cooke said the funds will go into growth and technology development.

## What this means for UK founders

Repeat founders with a large exit or user base behind them can still raise strong pre-seed rounds, even in a crowded AI market. Concept, which was the first VC to back ElevenLabs, keeps leading these early London cheques.

The [UK edtech startup funding](https://bizztor.com/uk-funding-data/edtech/) picture shows how hard consumer learning apps find it to raise past seed. Mindmax's pitch to adults studying for professional exams gives it a clearer path to paying users than general learning.

Founders thinking about their own pre-seed can compare this round with others in Bizztor's [London startup funding data](https://bizztor.com/uk-funding-data/london/), and check whether they have [founder-market fit](https://bizztor.com/guides/founder-market-fit-what-it-is/) of the kind investors backed here.

---

Source: https://bizztor.com/news/mindmax-raises-2-5m-pre-seed-funding-ai-tutor/