Munich, Germany-Based eKidz Selected for Accelerate’s National Initiative to Evaluate AI Tools in Classrooms

eKidz joins a national cohort to generate evidence on how AI can improve student outcomes and support teachers.

Munich, Germany (May 13, 2026) — Accelerate today announced the selection of eKidz as one of 11 organizations participating in its second Call for Effective Technology (CET) grant program, a national effort to evaluate how artificial intelligence (AI) and other tech-enabled tools can be effectively integrated to address persistent challenges in K-12 education. As schools navigate a rapidly expanding market of AI tools, the CET program is designed to generate rigorous, research-backed insights on what works in classrooms, and what doesn’t. Selected from a competitive pool of applicants, grantees will participate in a yearlong evaluation. The study will assess whether their approach improves student outcomes, how it works in practice, and the cost to implement.

“This cohort represents some of the most promising efforts to use AI in service of teaching and learning,” said Kevin Huffman, CEO of Accelerate. “We’re excited to work closely with these organizations to understand what actually improves student outcomes and what it takes to make those solutions work in practice.”

eKidz enables students to engage in structured oral reading and conversational writing and speaking tasks designed to strengthen fluency and support language development across all domains for multilingual learners. Powered by inclusive AI and phoneme-level automatic speech recognition (ASR) developed for children’s voices, the platform accurately recognizes diverse accents and code-switching in both English and Spanish, ensuring equitable access for all learners. Students engage in guided activities across all language domains within a kid-safe conversational environment that provides real-time instructional support and adaptive coaching. By combining guardrailed AI with research-based literacy practices, eKidz helps students strengthen foundational literacy skills, language development, and confidence through personalized, interactive learning experiences.

“One in five students learns or thinks differently, yet most AI in education is built around a narrow definition of what a learner looks and sounds like. Those students don’t need more tools built for someone else. They need literacy systems designed for them from the start. eKidz has already reached 500,000 students globally by doing exactly that: building voice-based AI that recognizes how every child actually communicates and turns that into real literacy progress. The Accelerate Grant lets us go further, bringing that same precision to multilingual learners and students performing below grade level, the children who have waited the longest for something that actually works for them,” said Natasha Tetruyeva, Co-Founder and CEO of eKidz.

Through participation in CET, eKidz will contribute to a growing body of evidence on how AI can be used to support teaching and learning in real classrooms. Findings from the program will help educators, policymakers, and school systems better understand which tools deliver meaningful results for students and are feasible to implement at scale.

To learn more about the CET program and its grantees, please visit https://accelerate.us/press-release-accelerate-names-11-grantees-to-test-ais-promise-of-real-time-personalized-instruction/.

About eKidz

eKidz builds a kid-safe conversational platform powered by inclusive, child-specific speech recognition and guardrail AI. Its technology recognizes diverse accents, dialects, code-switching, and disability-related speech patterns, enabling equitable coaching experiences across reading, writing, and learning.
For more information, visit www.ekidz.eu

About Accelerate

Accelerate is a national nonprofit that helps states turn strong evidence into real results for students. By aligning research, policy, and practice, Accelerate helps states scale proven strategies in public schools. Through grantmaking, research, partnerships, and state implementation support, Accelerate ensures that what works for students translates into measurable gains in classrooms nationwide.
For more information, visit www.accelerate.us

Media Contact:

Nataliya Tetruyeva
nataliya.tetruyeva@ekidz.eu
Tel. (201) 275-1400