Sainaptic raises £1M to grow AI marking tool that cuts hours to seconds
What's the deal? UK edtech startup sAInapticDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has raised £1 million to expand its AI-assisted assessment marking technology. The round was co-led by Cornerstone VCDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Ufi VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, with participation from Elm Venture Partners and Brighteye VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
What does it do? Founded by Cambridge-trained educators and data scientists Kavitha Ravindran and Rajeshwari Iyer, sAInaptic builds AI tools that help exam boards and training providers assess vocational and professional qualifications. These often involve short answers, essays, reports, and professional discussions rather than multiple-choice questions.
Why now? Assessing such work requires trained professionals and can take up to 90 minutes per assessment, delaying feedback, certification, and entry into employment while raising costs. The company says its domain-trained AI models have cut marking times for some qualifications from 45 minutes to eight seconds, with potential annual savings of up to £150,000.
How accurate is it? sAInaptic reports less than 1% deviation from expert assessors and near-perfect accuracy in grades awarded for work-based skills assessments.
What's the endgame? The funding will push the product beyond marking and feedback into quality assurance, analytics, and personalised assessments. It will also support the growth of the engineering, product, and sales teams.
The raise comes alongside a partnership with assessment software provider Skilltech SolutionsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which will make the technology available to some of the UK's largest apprenticeship assessment organisations. The joint offering will start with portfolio evaluation across selected apprenticeship standards and is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027, keeping qualified assessors in control of final decisions.
The signal: AI-assisted marking targets a persistent bottleneck in vocational education, where human grading is slow and costly. By pairing automation with assessor oversight, sAInaptic reflects a broader push to speed up certification without ceding final judgement to machines.
Read more: Tech.eu
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