From AI-powered teaching assistants to system-wide transformations: how Efekta makes high-quality education accessible, personalised, and scalable.
We all know that AI is transforming education. The real test? Scaling it effectively, equitably and responsibly to every learner and classroom. Efekta, an EF (Education First) company and last year’s EdtechX Award Winner, is doing just that. In this EdTechX Hall of Fame feature, Efekta’s Dr. Christopher McCormick shares how they are supporting governments, schools, universities, and global corporates move from AI learning pilots to system‑wide impact with measurable outcomes.
Amid teacher shortages and widening attainment gaps, Efekta is driving AI as the practical partner for English and STEM. Built on the data and pedagogical expertise of EF, the world’s largest privately held education company, Efekta has taught over 24 million learners worldwide, with 4 million active students and 25,000 teachers, achieving engagement rates as high as 95%.
Dr. McCormick also reflects on what winning an EdTechX Award meant for the team.
Dive into our exclusive interview below and join innovators like Efekta by applying to the EdTechX Awards. Winners are celebrated on stage at the EdTechX Summit in London (16 June 2026), in front of 300+ senior industry leaders and investors.
In a few sentences, what does Efekta do and what problem does it solve? What’s one example/case study that shows real impact?
Efekta is an innovative AI Tech company with the mission to make high-quality high-school education universally available at scale — all for the cost of a textbook per student. Starting with English language learning and soon other STEM subjects.
Efekta has developed the world’s leading AI Teaching Assistant (Addi) and Learning Platform that empowers learners and teachers in schools, universities, and global corporations. Addi works alongside human teachers to give students a truly personal learning journey. The AI explains lessons clearly, guides students through practice, and teaches each subject accurately — like a subject expert would, if one were available. This frees teachers to inspire and motivate and gives students personalized education that used to be available only to a privileged few.
Our technology is based on data and experience from the world’s largest online English school and 60 years of leadership in the field of immersive education.
The Brazilian government recently introduced the Efekta platform across seven states in their high school systems, reaching more than four million learners. In the state of Paraná alone, 750,000 students using the Efekta learning platform achieved 32.5% improvement in state English language proficiency tests in under 18 months, which are results that are unprecedented at this scale.
To date, Efekta’s AI-powered learning platform has taught over 24 million people and is currently used by more than four million active students, 25,000 teachers, 3,000 corporate clients, and several governments worldwide.
In the past year, what has been the biggest win and the biggest challenge?
In 2025, Efekta launched the world’s largest deployment of AI in education, with 4 million school students and their teachers across Latin America. Built on the largest English language learning dataset, Efekta’s AI learning companion (Addi) combines cutting-edge AI with Efekta’s proprietary curriculum and decades of pedagogical expertise. Addi delivers highly personalized learning aligned to each student’s level and interests, gives contextual support, and provides feedback on fluency in real time.
An interesting challenge at this stage is addressing the different contexts that teachers and learners are in around the globe. There are varying levels of infrastructure, digital and AI literacy, and experience working with educational technology to support advancing learning gains. In collaboration with ministries of education, subject matter experts, and our operations and engineering teams, we are helping to adjust the guidance, training, and ongoing support needed to get projects off to a great start.
Over the next 12 months, what excites you most and what keeps you up at night?
This is a fantastic moment to be working in the field of education, where technology can help to deliver immersive, authentic learning experiences in ways we have imagined and attempted for years. I do have concerns around the general readiness in the field for such major transitions to technology-enhanced learning at scale: we need to work hard to understand where gaps exist and be prepared to collaborate across stakeholders’ systems to ensure fair, equitable, and affordable access.
Where do you see the biggest opportunities in language learning right now? What 1–2 trends do you think will define 2026?
This year we are seeing the world’s largest deployment of AI in school systems around the world to support more interactive, immersive, and individualized language teaching. This marks a major uplift in teacher support to give every student the personalized practice and feedback needed to develop their accuracy, confidence, and fluency. For language teachers, this will be transformational; learning a language is a skill that needs time and effort to develop. Large class sizes and qualified teacher shortages are a factor in public education generally, and principled AI teaching assistance can go some way to both increase practice opportunities and reduce admin workload. This allows teachers to focus on motivating and encouraging their students to become confident and independent language speakers.
When the team looks back on the EdTechX Summit and winning the Award, what impact did it have, whether big or small? Have there been any unexpected opportunities, conversations or takeaways as a result?
Winning the EdTechX award was a moment of pride for our team and a validation of our mission and collective ambition to democratize education. Achieving this recognition was a chance for us to celebrate the industry leading developments we’re making, and recommit to raising the bar — on impact, on outcomes, and on how we support learners and teachers alike.
The awards and Summit were also a great opportunity to meet fellow innovators, to see what others are doing in this space and discuss the trends and what’s coming in Edtech.
Apart from Efekta, if you could nominate a company for an EdTechX Award, who would it be?
It’s great to see that Edtech’s moment has finally arrived, and there are many innovative peer companies that we see thriving. E.g. in India, companies like SigIQ innovate and use AI tutors to help candidates prepare for civil service exams.
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