Sainaptic, an AI assisted marking tech startup for exam boards and training providers, has raised £1m in funding led by Cornerstone VC and Ufi Ventures, with participation from Elm Venture Partners and Brighteye Ventures. The funding is announced alongside a new partnership with assessment management software provider Skilltech Solutions, which will see Sainaptic offered to some of United Kingdom’s largest apprenticeships assessment organisations.
Sainaptic develops AI-powered tools to help exam boards and training providers assess vocational and professional qualifications. Vocational and professional qualifications are frequently assessed through short answers, essays, reports, presentations and professional discussions, not just multiple-choice questions. Marking this work accurately, fairly and without bias takes trained assessors up to 90 minutes per assessment, delaying feedback to learners, time to certification and placement in jobs, and adding cost for organisations running assessments. With Sainaptic’s technology, marking times are reduced from 45 minutes to 8 seconds in some qualifications, saving up to £150,000 a year.
Sainaptic’s models, trained on domain-specific data, are developed with an uncompromising approach to model training, validation and optimisation. The AI models have reduced marking times from 45 minutes to eight seconds and achieve less than 1% deviation from expert assessor judgement. Crucially, the model evaluates not just knowledge but also work-based skills at an accuracy of near 100% on grades awarded, with a 97% reduction in re-marking for one client, Safety Training Awards. The new partnership with Skilltech Solutions will combine Sainaptic’s AI models with Skilltech’s assessment delivery platform and industry relationships, enabling apprenticeship assessment organisations to introduce AI-assisted portfolio marking while keeping qualified assessors in control of final decisions.
Sainaptic was founded by a team with academic, educational and data science expertise, including Cambridge-trained educators Kavitha Ravindran and Rajeshwari Iyer. The funding will help Sainaptic expand its product offering from marking and feedback into quality assurance, analytics and personalisation of assessments. Funding will also support the growth of engineering, product and sales teams as Sainaptic works with education providers and examining boards.
AI is about to reshape how the world assesses competence, and the winners will be the companies that earn the trust of awarding bodies and regulators. Sainaptic is built for exactly that. Raj and Kavitha bring rare pedagogical and AI expertise, and their traction with education providers and examining boards shows the demand is already here. Much of the global workforce must pass exams to qualify for the work they do, and marking and moderation at that scale is a growing challenge. What set Sainaptic apart for us was their approach domain-specific models, explainability at the core and human experts always in control. That’s why Cornerstone VC co-led this round, and we’re proud to back them as they scale.
