Sora Schools Secures $10 Million to Reshape Education for the AI Era

Sora Schools, an online middle and high school, has raised $10 million in fresh funding in a round led by existing backers Union Square Ventures and General Catalyst, with participation from Sparkmind Capital, Honeystone Ventures, and LearnerStudio. This brings the company’s total funding to about $31 million. The announcement was shared publicly by Sora’s CEO, Garrett Smiley, on LinkedIn.

The investment comes at a time when Sora’s leadership is openly questioning whether traditional education can adapt fast enough to the changes brought by artificial intelligence. Smiley wrote that many of the basic assumptions of conventional schooling no longer make sense. He said systems built around lectures, memorization, and standardized tests were designed for a world where information was scarce and most work was routine. That world is changing quickly as AI tools become more capable and widespread.

Smiley described the core purpose of Sora Schools as focusing on real-world projects and skills that matter in an AI-rich environment. Rather than emphasizing memorizing facts, Sora’s model pushes students to develop what Smiley calls “Agency,” “Sensemaking,” and “Storytelling.” These are skills that help young people navigate uncertainty, think critically, and communicate well, traits Smiley sees as distinctly human and hard for AI to replace.

The format of the school is flexible. There are no strict class periods and collaboration among students is promoted through project work. They create their portfolios gradually instead of trying to get the grades at every step. The approach aims at keeping the students more interested and thus always ready for the future, which will require the use of complex thinking, judgment, and collaboration.

The recent funding will help Sora Schools in its transition to a wider online setup. The company is looking at working with private schools, setting up partnerships with public schools, establishing regional micro-schools, running camps, and after-school programs as its way of expansion. Through this, the Sora method will no longer be confined to only a few students situated in certain age brackets or geographical areas.

Making public statements, Smiley has always been so that Sora’s rulers have taken the investment as not only growth money but a message at the same time. They argue that the current educational system has to evolve, fast. Otherwise, it will not be able to meet the needs of the students in a future dominated by AI, thus leaving them unprepared.