Teacher’s Buddy, a Melbourne-based EdTech founded in 2024, has raised AUD $1.85 million in seed funding. The round was led by impact VC firm Giant Leap, with contributions from Flying Fox Ventures, Co Ventures, Exhort Ventures, Saniel Ventures, and Soul Capital.

The financing arrives amid mounting evidence of a profession under siege: internationally, up to 75% of teachers report symptoms of burnout, and in Australia, teachers are logging more than 50 hours a week, with up to a third of that time consumed by administrative and planning tasks.

Mental health statistics are equally grim, with Australian teachers experiencing depression, anxiety, and stress at three times the national average.

The startup is co-founded by two Australian startup veterans: Ben Sze, who previously co-founded Edrolo, one of Australia’s most successful EdTech platforms, and Matt Abraham, who brings over 20 years of experience in digital product development and a decade of service on school boards.

This dual background, combining successful EdTech scaling with deep, on-the-ground knowledge of systemic school challenges, appears to be a key driver for investor interest.

The company’s platform is designed to lighten the administrative load, support professional development, and use data to improve student outcomes. Sze articulated the core problem and his proposed solution: “Teachers are working more than 50 hours a week, with up to a third of that time lost to planning and admin. Teacher’s Buddy aims to reverse these trends by delivering an all-in-one, AI-enhanced workspace designed to lighten the load, foster growth, and unlock every student’s potential.”

Teacher’s Buddy claims rapid, significant traction. The platform has already attracted more than 12,000 teachers across 130 countries and secured 15 school partnerships, including institutions like Orbost P-12 Community College (AU), Point Cook Senior College (AU), and Kaipara College (NZ).

The company is backing its claims with concrete data on time savings, a critical metric for a burnout-focused product. Within a single school term, teachers reportedly saved an average of 12 days worth of time using the platform, broken down as:

Giant Leap Partner Adam Milgrom framed the investment as targeting an often-overlooked area of impact. “Teacher’s Buddy is addressing one of the most under-recognised levers for improving student outcomes: supporting teacher capacity,” Milgrom said. “By applying AI to reduce workload and streamline planning, Ben and Matt are not only improving teacher wellbeing but also enhancing learning outcomes. The rapid adoption of Teacher’s Buddy reflects the urgency of this challenge and the global relevance of their solution.”

The investment highlights the growing conviction among VCs that AI is finally the tool capable of fundamentally disrupting EdTech, an industry famously resistant to sweeping change.

Maxine Minter, General Partner at Co Ventures, noted the shift. “As early-stage investors, we’ve long seen education as one of those white whales — an industry everyone knows is broken, but one that’s been tough to fix because traditional software just wasn’t built for the realities of the classroom,” Minter stated. “With AI now in our toolkit, we finally have a chance to test those old assumptions and reimagine what it means to support teachers and educate the next generation.”

Minter added that the team’s prior success was a major factor: “It’s rare, especially in Australia, to find founders who’ve lived this problem and already built successfully in the same space. This inflection point in technology gives us the chance to back Ben and Matt as they take another run at a challenge they’ve been obsessed with for years.”

With the new capital, Teacher’s Buddy plans to aggressively scale its engineering and product teams, build out its roadmap, and focus its go-to-market efforts initially across Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

Their immediate goal is to expand the user base to more than 30,000 teachers and 200 school partners within the next 12 months.

Co-founder Abraham believes the problem's magnitude validates their aggressive strategy. “We’ve set ambitious targets for the business,” he said. “But we also know we’re directly addressing a fundamental issue in global education, one that’s only getting worse. Our early traction is proof of how urgent and widespread the need for a solution really is.”

Rachael Neumann, Partner at Flying Fox Ventures, concluded by underscoring the humanitarian angle: “At Flying Fox Ventures, we back founders taking on problems that matter to humanity at scale. Teacher’s Buddy is tackling one of the world’s most urgent and underfunded leverage points: giving teachers their time and energy back. When educators thrive, entire generations do.”