Christina Melas-Kyriazi’s Post

I am proud to announce the launch of Ansa Anywhere today: a POS and PSP agnostic tap-to-pay solution to let merchants accept their branded digital wallet in-store, seamlessly! Say goodbye to scanners, QR codes, and standalone hardware. Anyone who has experience with in-store payments knows how painful changing any part of the stack can be. Ecommerce payments have come a long way in the past decade for ease of use, adding new payment methods, and driving smoother customer experiences. At the point-of-sale the picture looks a little different: multiple hardware, software, and firmware providers with varying levels of modern technology. Integrations can be a delicate patchwork. For large brands not every location is always on the same stack. We believe that customers, front of house staff, and tech teams deserve better. Over the past year the team at Ansa has been hard at work to build a best-in-class customer experience paired with a best-in-class integration for brands to launch their wallet wherever their customers pay. Just tap & go, read more here: https://lnkd.in/g5kZ5QxQ

Announcing MagicSchool's $15m Series A Raise As a lifelong teacher and principal, I started MagicSchool AI to bring an AI assistant to every educator and help fight the crisis of burnout in schools. It began by building and sharing simple to use AI tools that would have helped me while in the classroom. The tools struck a chord and garnered a fast growing community of educators. Inspired by their feedback, we continued to grow the platform with even more education-specific tools to assist them. And it worked. In less than a year since launch, over 2 million educators have signed up for the platform, over 4,000 schools and districts have joined us as partners, and MagicSchool is the fastest growing technology platform for schools ever. It’s found its way into workflows like nothing else before it - led by a grassroots movement of educators who are sharing the love every day. So, what’s next? We’ve always believed that Teachers are Magic, not the AI. An educator who is trusted, empowered, and has great relationships with their students - that’s when magic happens. In our new MagicSchool for Students platform, we put the power of AI in the hands of educators and allow them to build and customize AI tools for their students. It’s currently growing even faster than our educator platform and has been used by hundreds of thousands of students in just over a month since launch. MagicSchool’s AI can help address big challenges in schools right now for students like supporting language learning, adaptive 1:1 tutoring, differentiating instruction, just-in-time supports for students, and more - but it can also help us imagine a more engaging education system for students. A system where more educators challenge students to use AI to spur creativity and ideation, build revenue generating businesses from school, write scripts for the next big Broadway show, manifest feature-length films, create new types of stories and art while their imagination is at its peak, build their own apps used by millions, find the next scientific breakthrough, and so much more. With educators at the forefront of this technological change, we have a once in a generation opportunity to transform the educational system for the better. MagicSchool is here to stay - and I couldn’t be more optimistic about the future. A sincere thank you to partners who contributed to our $15.3m funding round to help serve educators and students around the world led by Bain Capital Ventures along with experts in education, AI, and the future of work including Range Ventures, Adobe Ventures, Common Sense Media, Embedding VC, Amjad Masad (Founder of Replit), Dan Carroll, Tyler Bosmeny, Rafael Garcia (Co-Founders of Clever Inc.), Amir Nathoo (Co-Founder of Outschool), Other Ventures, Claire Fisher, and Jill Fisher Bowen.