Atama plus

About Atama plus

Atama plus Inc. is an education technology firm established in Japan on April 3, 2017, with a mission to shorten the time required for foundational learning, thereby creating more time for developing skills applicable in society. The company was co-founded by CEO Daisuke Inada, Makoto Nakashita, and Takanori Kawahara. Inada, an alumnus of the University of Tokyo, previously worked at Mitsui & Co., where he led educational business ventures. His experience, including a stay in Brazil, led him to believe in the transformative power of education, inspiring him to launch atama plus with two trusted and highly skilled university classmates. Kawahara, the CTO, is an engineer with a background at Microsoft, while Nakashita has extensive experience in business management from his time at Recruit.

The company's core offering is 'atama+', an AI-driven learning platform for junior high and high school students. This system analyzes each student's comprehension level, mistake patterns, and areas of weakness to generate a personalized curriculum from a vast number of potential learning paths. It pinpoints the root cause of a student's struggles, often tracing it back to earlier concepts, and provides a tailored sequence of video lectures, practice problems, and reviews to build a solid foundation. The platform visualizes progress, showing what has been mastered and how much time is needed to reach specific goals, such as passing entrance exams. Initially covering subjects like Math, English, Physics, and Chemistry, the curriculum has expanded to include more subjects for elementary, junior high, and high school levels.

Atama plus initially operated on a B2BtoC model, providing its platform as a SaaS product to private cram schools ('juku') and preparatory schools across Japan, reaching over 4,000 classrooms. Revenue is generated through monthly fees for its platform. To broaden its reach, the company launched a direct-to-consumer online school, 'atama+ Online Juku', in 2023. In June 2024, it introduced a franchise model, 'Shingaku Kobetsu atama+ Juku', to deploy its AI-powered, fixed-fee tutoring model nationwide. This model moves away from traditional per-class pricing to a flat-rate system, allowing students to study at their own pace without cost concerns. Additionally, atama plus offers a 'High School-University Connection Program' used by universities for pre-enrollment education and in admissions processes.

The company has secured significant funding to fuel its growth, including a Series B round in July 2021 that brought its total raised capital to approximately $74.3 million from investors like DCM Ventures, JAFCO Group, T. Rowe Price, and Pavilion Capital. This funding is directed towards enhancing product development, strengthening customer support, and marketing activities. Most recently, in October 2024, the company began testing a generative AI feature to provide step-by-step problem explanations tailored to individual student understanding.