Aiming at the needs of the New Curriculum Standard for Natural Phonics, "Yaoshun Technology" has completed a millions-yuan angel round of financing | 36Kr exclusive.

Author | Deng Yongyi

Editor | Su Jianxun

36Kr has learned that the AI education hardware company "Yaoshun Technology" has completed a millions-yuan angel round of financing. The investors are the Dinosaur Fund, a joint venture between Sequoia China and VIPKID, and a fund controlled by a senior founder in the education industry.

If the fierce competition and turmoil in the K12 sector have quietly faded away, then the current education track has entered an era of more refined entrepreneurship - only by maximizing the experience in each sub-track can one possibly gain a foothold in the market.

Yaoshun Technology was founded in 2024, and its team comes from institutions such as Yuanfudao, New Oriental, Spark Thinking, and Changqingteng Baba. The founder, Li Futong, worked at Zebra for four years, progressing from product manager to hardware marketing director, and led the research and development of Zebra Thinking Machine from scratch; while the content partner, Zhang Songtao, is the former content partner of Changqingteng Baba and the former famous English teacher of New Oriental.

Yaoshun Technology has chosen a new track - Phonics, hoping to use the combination of AI and software and hardware to provide solutions for children users in the enlightenment market.

"Phonics" is a key point in the current reform of the new curriculum standard.

Different from the past "phonetic symbol" English learning method, if English words are compared to Lego blocks, Phonics is to teach children to recognize the pronunciation rules of each "letter block".

For example, the letter combination "sh" sounds similar to "shi", and "oa" sounds similar to "ou". When children master these rules, they can break down words like building blocks: when they hear "fish", they know it is "f-i-sh", and when they see "boat", they can break it down into "b-oa-t".

△ Source: dooloo

This method abandons the traditional phonetic symbols and is closer to the logic of mother tongue learning - just as Chinese children learn to recognize characters through pinyin, Phonics enables English learners to "read when they see the words and write when they hear the sounds". In the global language education field, Phonics has become a widely spread and generally recognized concept. From developed countries in Europe and America, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, to Asian countries such as Singapore and South Korea, and even some countries in Africa and Latin America, many education systems have integrated Phonics into the basic language teaching process. Therefore, Yaoshun Technology's choice of the Phonics machine as the company's first product has laid a solid foundation for the product to go global.

Li Futong said that driven by the new curriculum standard policy, "Phonics" has now become a necessary demand in domestic English teaching, and for such a new market, the current solutions are far from meeting the market demand.

However, why does Phonics need a dedicated device?

"The existing solutions on the market are mainly divided into two categories: one is training courses. First of all, the unit price of the courses is relatively high, with an average price of several hundred yuan per class. Only a few spelling rules are learned in each class, and a complete set of courses costs several thousand to tens of thousands of yuan. Moreover, children do not have a practice scenario at home after learning. The other is books. Learning from books puts a lot of pressure on both parents and children. Today, as the mainstream parents are the post-80s and post-90s generation, they have never been exposed to Phonics, so pure book products also make mothers feel at a loss. Therefore, what everyone needs is a solution that can both learn and practice, is not burdensome for mothers, and is cost-effective, and this solution must be an intelligent education hardware that combines software and hardware." Li Futong said.

On Douyin, the growth rate of educational derivatives in recent years is much higher than that of courses. Li Futong gave an example: The GMV of the Douyin education track exceeded 10 billion in 2023, of which educational derivatives accounted for 30%. Educational tablets and toys have gradually established a presence in the minds of users.

Therefore, Yaoshun Technology has chosen a "software and hardware combination" route for children's education hardware. The team's first product, the "Dooloo Phonics Machine", priced at 599 yuan, uses the AI hardware method to guide the learning process of Phonics, and is equipped with a keyboard and a card slot to meet the needs of both learning and practicing scenarios.

After the era of large models has arrived, many AI education companies are making more attempts in content generation, such as directly generating course content based on AI. However, at present, the problem of content hallucination generated by large models is relatively serious. Yaoshun Technology's approach is: taking the teaching and research structure as the basic knowledge tree, and combining the AI large model to generate and review some basic content. The teaching and research only needs a second review to complete the production and supplementation of basic content, which not only avoids the current problem of AI hallucination but also greatly improves the efficiency of teaching and research.

For example, in the Phonics course, the quality of content in the form of games and stories is the key to attracting and maintaining the attention of preschool children. If the sound is not vivid enough and the storyline is not reasonable and interesting, at the product level, it is naturally impossible to retain users.

Therefore, in the first stage of the Phonics Machine, the core teaching and research system was independently built by the team over a period of half a year, covering almost all spelling rules and supporting storylines, ensuring a strong binding between the storyline logic and the learning objectives. Among them, 20% of the pictures and audio content are directly generated by the large model, and more than 100,000 audio and video are pre-reviewed by the large model, and the teaching and research are manually reviewed for the second time.

△ Source: dooloo

Currently, the Phonics Machine mainly has two usage modes. One is the point-and-read mode - after inserting the card, the AI animated storyline is triggered, and children can advance the story and complete the learning of spelling rules by clicking on the screen above the machine. Learning and remembering the rules happens naturally, just like "playing a game and passing levels".

The second is the keyboard mode: by inputting words, the spelling steps can be decomposed, like a portable dictionary, but it is more accessible and more convenient to query than categories such as iPads and existing learning machines.

"The existing courses on the market are several hundred yuan per class, which is a continuous action. Many parents spend an average of 20,000 yuan per year on offline spelling courses." Li Futong said that when the child turns on the point-and-read machine, the parents will feel that the child will focus on "learning spelling" for at least 15 minutes, and avoid spending more time on devices such as iPads.

The team found in the early stage of testing that the error correction response of the physical buttons is faster, and the sense of ritual of inserting the card can also improve the concentration. Many children can spontaneously study for half an hour every day because of the gamification and VS mechanism design in the spelling machine. Some children can independently spell simple words within two weeks. This is the definite value provided by the Phonics Machine.

In addition, the current price of 599 yuan is cost-effective enough to attract the first batch of parents who are willing to pay for this demand, and also attracts many users of more school-age groups - among the seed users of the Dooloo Phonics Machine, 70% are parents of 4 - 6 - year - old children in first - tier cities, and 30% are 6 - 10 - year - old users in other cities.

Li Futong said that Phonics is a new vacancy driven by policies in China, and the Dooloo Phonics Machine aims to achieve a shipment volume of 100,000 units in 2025. Although it seems to be a relatively niche market, as long as the demand is met well enough, it can be expected to become an AI education device that every family has in the future.

Currently, the Dooloo Phonics Machine has completed the development of the first stage of the teaching and research system, and the hardware part has also been launched on a small scale for market testing. In the past more than one month, the GMV has been close to 2.5 million yuan. The team expects to carry out the first batch of market launches in 2025, covering the scope from domestic to global expansion, and accelerating the optimization and implementation of the product, so that the combination of AI and teaching and research can be extended from internal content production to directly facing the user side for learning and practice.

"The Dooloo team will also continue to maintain its enthusiasm for education and build an AI hardware ecosystem suitable for the intelligent and interesting learning and practice of the new generation of children around the sub-demands of children's enlightenment education." Li Futong said.

Currently, the company has officially started the next round of financing.