Today, we're announcing a pre-seed round led by Rockstart to bring eevi's voice-first AI language tutor to more learners. We're building a language learning experience around real conversation, with guidance that adapts to your level, interests and challenges.
The idea started with my co-founder and schoolfriend, Jago Gazendam, moving to Spain. He had built up an extensive streak on a language app, but everyday conversations were still difficult. Progress in the app hadn't translated into the confidence to speak.
That gap became the starting point for eevi. Recognising a word or choosing the right translation is useful practice. Holding a conversation asks something more of you: listening, finding your own words and responding in the moment.
We call the gap between those experiences the fluency illusion. You feel you're making progress while studying, then struggle when someone actually speaks to you. We wanted to build a learning experience that prepares you for that conversation from the beginning.
Language schools provide structure, but usually work to a shared programme and timetable. Private tutors offer individual attention, but cost and availability can make regular lessons difficult. Jago and I started eevi to make guided conversation practice more accessible and easier to fit into everyday life.
Real-time voice AI makes it possible to have a back-and-forth conversation with an AI tutor. Combined with a structured curriculum, it gives us a way to build lessons around what each learner needs to practise.
Eevi's curriculum draws on more than 15 academic frameworks in language learning research. It covers everyday situations, from family life and grocery shopping to dining out, with a practical purpose for each conversation.
In a café scenario, for example, you practise ordering a drink and a snack, asking what is available and thanking the server. You use the language to do something you might need to do that afternoon.
While you learn a new language, eevi learns about you. Each conversation helps build a clearer picture of your challenges and interests, shaping what you practise next. Our aim is to bring the personal guidance of a language tutor into an experience you can use whenever you have time to learn.
Rockstart was one of the earliest investors in Hubs, the company I co-founded before its acquisition by Protolabs in 2021. Now, they're backing Jago and me as we build eevi.
Max ter Horst, Managing Partner at Rockstart, put it this way in today's announcement:
The funding supports our move from closed beta to a wider public audience and our growth over the next 12 months.
For us, the outcome that matters is the moment a learner starts talking and realises: “I can do this.” That's what we're building eevi around.
Eevi is available on iPhone, Android and the web.
Start learning at eevi.ai.
For journalists: press kit · filemon@eevi.ai.
