Ever felt stuck trying to take notes from long YouTube lectures, stuck at complex terms mid-video, or scrambling to prep for quizzes? You’re not alone and now, you don’t have to do it alone either. Meet Opennote, a new AI-powered tutor that’s here to make studying a whole lot easier.
Backed by Y Combinator, Opennote quietly launched just four months ago and is already changing the way students learn. Whether it’s breaking down complicated concepts or summarizing lengthy videos, the platform uses AI to turn overwhelming study sessions into something smarter.
This newly launched AI tutor turns lecture slides, notes, or textbook chapters into personalized video lessons, practice problems, and interactive whiteboards. The startup claims it caters to individual’s learning style and goals. Opennote can also be treated like a friend, “just chat with Opennote like you would with a friend: ask anything, anytime, and get instant, personalized help on any topic,” Y Combinator wrote in a LinkedIn post on Opennote.
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“We started Opennote as students, solving our own problem: in large classes, we didn’t get the personalized support we needed to truly understand the material. Learning felt one-size-fits-all — and we knew there had to be a better way. So we envisioned a platform that adapts to you, making learning more personal, interactive, and effective,” the Opennote founding team —Abhigyan Arya, Rishi Srihari, and Vedant Vyas — said in a statement.
With Opennote, students can study solo or collaborate by inviting friends into a shared workspace. It’s more than just watching videos or reading notes—there’s space to exchange ideas, track progress, and learn together in real time.
The platform offers a free plan which provides limited chats, file uploads, and access to its journal and video vault. With $15 per month (and even cheaper with a university email), the premium plan unlocks everything: unlimited chat, AI-generated video summaries, file analysis, and more space to organize study sessions. There’s even an enterprise option for schools.
The platform is being widely utilized by over 50,000 students across 110+ countries, having signed up organically since the February launch, according to the AI learning startup.
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Opennote recently raised $850,000 in pre-seed funding, led by Afore Capital, with participation from companies such as Sancus Ventures, Script Capital, Untitled Ventures, and other angel investors. With this capital, the AI learning startup aims to double down its efforts in providing advanced specialized educational interface, development of robust multimodal tools, and video generation.
This AI learning tutor platform could be a direct competitor of OpenAI’s Chatgpt. According to a report of SQ Magazine, over 21,000 schools and universities across 130+ countries have integrated OpenAI solutions in their learning approach. Students take help of ChatGPT to finish their assignments and in their examination purposes.
As of mid-2025, more than 3,400 education apps and platforms are using OpenAI’s API to power their tools, as per the data given by SQ Magazine. OpenAI is also quietly testing a new feature called “Study Together.” The idea is to move beyond just solo chat-based help and actually guide students through structured learning—step by step. It’s still early days, but if this rolls out fully, it could shift ChatGPT from just being a smart assistant to more of an actual learning companion.