paddy with 1 million euros in pre-seed financing

The Bielefeld-based startup paddy has closed a pre-seed financing round of 1 million euros. The round was led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF). The aim of the up-and-coming company is to use artificial intelligence to significantly reduce the workload of teachers in everyday teaching, from planning to follow-up.

From students for schools

paddy was founded in 2024 by Matty Frommann, Lukas Portmann and Tobias Schröder. All three are teachers' children and have only just finished school themselves. CTO Lukas Kaufmann joined them later. The idea arose from their own experiences: Overwork, too little time for individual pupils and insufficient digital support in the classroom.

Digital teaching aid

The AI platform from paddy supports teachers in all phases of teaching:

• It recognizes the topic, target group and learning objective,
• suggests suitable methods and task formats,
• creates differentiated teaching material
• and analyzes the learning level of the students.

paddy works without lengthy training and noticeably saves teachers time, which can be used for individual support.

paddy shows how to reduce stress for teachers and train students to use AI at an early stage. But I was particularly impressed by the team - exceptionally entrepreneurial for their age.

Felix Assion, Investment Manager at HTGF

Huge market potential and strong growth

According to Bitkom, more than 70% of teachers see overwork and a shortage of skilled workers as key challenges. At the same time, there is a lack of scalable solutions that actually help in everyday life. This is where paddy comes in and hits a nerve. 12,000 active users have been using the platform since its launch in January 2025, and the team is aiming for a mid-six-figure turnover by the end of the year.

EdTech is always a big topic, but in our view the startup has yet to prove that worksheets designed outside the classroom save teachers time in the classroom. Our own experience is actually the opposite, as the teachers with the worksheets were always surprisingly weak when it came to teaching the material directly. In addition, the German education system is struggling with a drastically declining level of education, which becomes more visible every year in the PISA study and education monitor. If the tool really does lead to measurable time savings, teachers should hold more lessons accordingly.

The corresponding impact on the teachers themselves and the interaction with data protection has also not been clarified. paddy nevertheless addresses an exciting clientele and we hope that teachers will not only use AI in the future to replace the numbers in their old exams.