Exam marking platform raises £1.6m to target US growth
Graide uses assistive AI and machine learning to help teachers grade essays and provide feedback to students.
Manjinder Kainth, Robert Stanyon, George Bartlett, Austin Tomlinson, who developed the automated grading system called Graide, and Professor Nicola Wilkin, Director of Education, College of Engineering and Physical Sciences
Graide, a University of Birmingham spinout whose assistive AI-based platform helps teachers mark student homework, has raised £1.65m to expand in the UK and target new markets in the US and Canada.
The funding has come from XTX Ventures alongside existing investors Mercia Ventures, the MEIF Proof of Concept & Early Stage Fund, which is managed by Mercia and part of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund (MEIF), SFC Capital and private investors.
Graide uses assistive AI and machine learning to help teachers grade essays and provide feedback to students. Initially designed for marking maths, physics and chemistry papers, the company has since launched a new platform that can mark essays and reports in all subjects. The company is also working on a new feature to detect students using AI to write essays.
The Midlands Engine Investment Fund invests in innovative and fast growing businesses in the Midlands. As the platform is already in use at several UK universities, the funding from the MEIF will allow Graide to focus on further business growth and international expansion in the US and Canada. MEIF’s support will help create new jobs while positively impacting the local economy.
Graide evaluates both the structure and quality of submissions. Unlike standard AI marking platforms, it does not need a lot of data to run through neural networks, can mark more than one question at a time and does not need to share data with other users in order to work properly. It is also ‘self-aware’ - only showing marks that it is confident in, and alerting the user to pieces of work that may need teacher scrutiny.
Studies have shown Graide’s AI platform can reduce marking time by between four and seven times and save over £400,000 of staff costs per year, while independent tests by learning platform Oxbridge show up to 99% accuracy against pre-marked English papers.
Graide was founded in 2021 by former students Robert Stanyon, Manjinder Kainth and George Bartlett. The platform is now used by universities including Birmingham, Durham, Huddersfield and Sussex, as well as learning platforms and exam boards, and has already carried out successful pilot projects in the US. The company, which is based in Wolverhampton, currently employs eight staff.
The latest funding brings the total it has raised to date to over £2.5m and will enable it to target new markets, further enhance its platform and create four new jobs in the next six months.
Graide provides transparent, explainable AI, a requirement in today’s world, and can cover all subjects taught from school to university level, saving teacher time. We are pleased to welcome XTX Ventures, which has extensive experience in AI and machine learning, as a new investor in this round.
XTX Ventures is the venture capital arm of algorithmic trading company XTX Markets. Oliver Scott, Global Head of Treasury at XTX Markets said: “We are delighted to have invested in Graide and we look forward to supporting the wonderful team there as they continue to expand in the UK and across the US and Canada.”
Hannah Tapsell Chapman from Mercia Ventures added: “Graide uses AI in a transparent and responsible way to speed up marking times while ensuring teachers are in control throughout. With educators worldwide becoming increasingly receptive to innovations as they seek to improve efficiency, this funding will help Manjinder and the team take advantage of emerging opportunities.”
Mark Wilcockson, Senior Investment Manager at the British Business Bank, said: “The Midlands Engine Investment Fund invests in innovative and fast growing businesses in the Midlands. As the platform is already in use at several UK universities, the funding from the MEIF will allow Graide to focus on further business growth and international expansion in the US and Canada. MEIF’s support will help create new jobs while positively impacting the local economy.”
The Midlands Engine Investment Fund is supported financially by the European Union using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 and the European Investment Bank.
Notes for editors
Notes for editors
For media information contact Ruth Ashton, University of Birmingham Enterprise, email: r.c.ashton@bham.ac.uk
About the University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions, and its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers and teachers and more than 6,500 international students from nearly 150 countries.
University of Birmingham Enterprise helps researchers turn their ideas into new services, products and enterprises that meet real-world needs. We also provide incubation, and support innovators and entrepreneurs with mentoring, advice, and training, manage the University’s Academic Consultancy Service, and University of Birmingham Enterprise Operating Divisions.
About Graide
Graide is an award-winning assessment and feedback platform. The venture-backed company is a spinout from the University of Birmingham. They support colleges, universities, exam boards, and awarding bodies.
About Mercia Ventures
Mercia Ventures is a proactive venture capital investor focused on being the first-choice partner for growth. Mercia Ventures makes equity investments of up to £10 million across all sectors, with specialisms in Software, Consumer, Healthcare and Deep Tech.
Mercia Ventures is part of Mercia Asset Management PLC and sits alongside its wider private equity, debt and proprietary balance sheet capital operations. The Group has 11 offices in the UK and Mercia Ventures’ national footprint and 48-strong investment team draws on their experiences as founders, PhD scientists, software engineers, corporate financiers and management consultants to help our partner companies successfully achieve their ambitions. Mercia Asset Management PLC currently has c.£1.4billion of assets under management and, since its IPO in December 2014, has a portfolio of over 400 start-ups from pre-seed to Series B. Mercia Asset Management PLC is quoted on AIM with the epic "MERC".
The Group raises its own Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) and Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) Funds and details about open offers can be found on Mercia’s website.
Mercia Asset Management PLC is quoted on AIM with the epic "MERC" and includes the following wholly-owned subsidiaries -
- Mercia Fund Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the FCA under firm reference number 524856
- Enterprise Ventures Limited is authorised and regulated by the FCA under firm reference number 183363
- EV Business Loans Limited is authorised and regulated by the FCA under firm reference number 443560
About the Midlands Engine Investment Fund (MEIF)
The Midlands Engine Investment Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund, will invest in Debt Finance, Small Business Loans, Proof-of-Concept and Equity Finance funds, ranging from £25,000 to £2m, specifically to help small and medium sized businesses secure the funding they need for growth and development.
The Midlands Engine Investment Fund is operated by British Business Financial Services Limited, wholly owned by British Business Bank, the UK’s national economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to make finance markets for smaller businesses work more effectively, enabling those businesses to prosper, grow and build UK economic activity.
The Midlands Engine Investment Fund is supported by the European Regional Development Fund, the European Investment Bank, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and British Business Finance Limited, a British Business Bank group company.
The MEIF covers the following LEP areas: Black Country, Coventry & Warwickshire, Greater Birmingham & Solihull, Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, The Marches, and Worcestershire in the West Midlands; and Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham & Nottinghamshire (D2N2) Greater Lincolnshire, Leicester and Leicestershire, and South-East Midlands in the East and South-East Midlands.
The project is receiving up to £78,550,000 of funding from the England European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020. The programme will continue to spend to the end of 2023.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is the Managing Authority for European Regional Development Fund. Established by the European Union, the European Regional Development Fund helps local areas stimulate their economic development by investing in projects which will support innovation, businesses, create jobs and local community regenerations.
The European Investment Bank is providing £122,500,000 to support the Midlands Engine Investment Fund. This follows backing for the Northern Powerhouse in 2017 and backing for the newly launched North East Fund.
The funds in which Midlands Engine Investment Fund invests are open to businesses with material operations in or planning to open material operations in the West Midlands and East & South-East Midlands.
The British Business Bank has published the Business Finance Guide (in partnership with the ICAEW, and a further 21 business and finance organisations). The guide impartially sets out the range of finance options available to businesses and provides links to support available at a regional level.
About the British Business Bank
The British Business Bank is the UK government’s economic development bank. Established in November 2014, its mission is to make finance markets for smaller businesses work more effectively, enabling those businesses to prosper, grow and build UK economic activity. Its remit is to design, deliver and efficiently manage UK-wide smaller business access to finance programmes for the UK government.
The British Business Bank’s core programmes support nearly £8bn[1] of finance to almost 94,800 smaller businesses[2]. Since March 2020, the British Business Bank has also launched four new Coronavirus business loan schemes, delivering almost £73bn of finance to around 1.6m businesses.
As well as increasing both supply and diversity of finance for UK smaller businesses through its programmes, the Bank works to raise awareness of the finance options available to smaller businesses. The British Business Bank Finance Hub provides independent and impartial information to businesses about their finance options, featuring short films, expert guides, checklists and articles from finance providers to help make their application a success.
In light of the coronavirus pandemic and EU Exit, the Finance Hub has expanded and it now targets a wider business audience. It continues to provide information and support for scale-up, high growth and potential high growth businesses, but now provides increased content, information and products for businesses in survival and recovery mindsets. The Finance Hub has been redesigned and repositioned to reflect this, during this period of economic uncertainty.
British Business Bank plc is a public limited company registered in England and Wales, registration number 08616013, registered office at Steel City House, West Street, Sheffield, S1 2GQ. It is a development bank wholly owned by HM Government. British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. They are not authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A complete legal structure chart for the group can be found on their website.
[1] Figures as at end of June 2020
[2] Figures as at 28 January 2021