Brainly is an AI education technology company from Kraków, Poland, with headquarters in New York City. It operates on an AI Learning Companion that provides schoolwork assistance for students, parents, and teachers.
History
The company, initially named Zadane.pl, was founded in 2009 in Poland by Michał Borkowski (the current chief executive officer),[2] Tomasz Kraus, and Łukasz Haluch.[3] Their website is a peer-to-peer platform where students can ask questions and answer them for other students.[4] Ranks are provided to students who offer high-quality answers.[5] The platform is moderated by both volunteers, staff, and machine learning algorithms.[6] The first million unique monthly users were achieved within 6 months after the release.[3]
In January 2011, the company founded Znanija.com, a Russian language version of the platform.[7]
In June 2016, Brainly acquired the US-based OpenStudy.[8][9]
In January 2018, Brainly announced the acquisition of the video education start-up Bask to incorporate video features into its platform.[10]
In 2020, the company saw a significant increase in its amount of users, attributed to the global COVID-19 pandemic, from 150 million in 2019 to approximately 350 million in 2020.[11][12]
In 2020, numerous users on the Art of Problem Solving website found that Brainly had compromised the integrity of the American Mathematics Competitions after posting the questions on its website along with the correct answers. This led to Brainly updating its honor code.[13]
As of 2020, the company had raised approximately $150 million in funding from investors.[12]
In 2024, Brainly released Test Prep, an AI-powered tool to assist students in enhancing their test scores.[15]
In 2025, Brainly transitioned from a community-led platform into a full-scale AI Learning Companion, introducing AI agentic support for homework help, tutoring, test preparation and active classroom participation. [16]
