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Ivan Crewkov is the CEO and Co-Founder of Buddy.ai, the leading AI tutor for kids under 12, reaching over 20 million students annually from all over the world. Buddy is not just a chatbot. It’s an AI-powered talking animated character in a mobile app teaching English as a foreign language to students all over the world.  Buddy is unique because it operates in a highly regulated environment where most off-the-shelf AIs like Chat GPT can't be used.

💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. From voice AI experiment to global learning companion
2. Building child-focused speech recognition in a regulated space
3. Blending gaming, storytelling, and education to engage kids
4. Buddy.ai’s growing adoption in classrooms worldwide
5. The future of Buddy.ai as a personalized, adaptive tutor

✨ Episode Highlights:
 [00:02:11 ] Ivan Crewkov’s journey from building smart speakers to founding Buddy.ai.
[00:04:24 ] Designing Buddy.ai as more than a chatbot—a gamified, lovable learning companion.
[00:07:27 ] How kids around the world discover and champion Buddy.ai themselves.
[00:11:02 ] Expanding Buddy.ai into classrooms in Latin America and beyond.
[00:16:41 ] Building proprietary speech recognition for children where others struggled.
[00:20:56 ] Buddy.ai’s unexpected role in speech therapy for kids with special needs.
[00:25:50 ] Why Buddy is designed as a study buddy, not an authority figure.
[00:33:37 ] Using generative AI to accelerate content creation and storytelling.
[00:39:00 ] Guardrails for safe, child-centered AI companions.
[00:42:01 ] Lessons EdTech can learn from the entertainment and gaming industries.

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This season of Edtech Insiders is once again brought to you by Tuck Advisors, the M&A firm for EdTech companies. Run by serial entrepreneurs with over 30 years of experience founding, investing in, and selling companies, Tuck believes you deserve M&A advisors who work as hard as you do.

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