The educational system is at a crossroads. AI is reshaping every aspect of learning — yet the tools entering classrooms are designed by technologists far removed from schools, handed to teachers as black boxes with no room to question, adapt, or shape. We believe this is the wrong paradigm.
Playlab was created from a conviction: the communities most affected by AI in education must be the ones to design it. Our founders — educators and engineers from MIT, Google, Amazon, Teach For All and Harvard — saw firsthand how top-down educational technology creates dependency rather than agency. Innovation was being done to teachers, not with them.
We built Playlab to flip this dynamic: a school-safe platform where educators and students build, test, and deploy their own AI tools — no coding required. The goal is not just better AI tools in schools. It is building the capacity of education communities to understand, evaluate, and shape the AI systems influencing their world.
What is at stake is not just academic performance — but whether young people will be empowered citizens in a society increasingly shaped by AI they did not design, cannot question, and do not control. We do not want educators to adapt to AI. We want them to design it.
An educator in Ghana opens Playlab and builds a lesson planning assistant aligned to the national curriculum — sharing it with 20,000 colleagues nationwide. A student in New York designs an AI writing tutor that delivers feedback in her own voice, serving thousands of peers. A teacher in Spain creates a multilingual support tool for students learning in their second language.
Playlab has two core components. First, a school-safe platform where educators and students build AI applications through an intuitive interface — defining the AI purpose, knowledge base, tone, and guardrails. No code required. Second, a structured learning journey — workshops, PLCs, and coaching — that develops AI knowledge, computational fluency, and discernment: what we call AI Agency.
The result: teachers become designers, not consumers. Students become authors of AI, not just users. Schools build capacity that does not disappear when a vendor changes its product.
In 2025: 56,000 new educators joined Playlab. 14,100+ students built their own AI apps. Enterprise partners report a 94 Net Promoter Score. 88.5% describe transformational progress in AI literacy.
Playlab spreads through three interlocking channels.
First, direct partnerships with districts, ministries, and professional learning organizations. In the US, Playlab operates across all 50 states. In Ghana, a national partnership with the Ministry of Education scaled AI lesson planning tools to 20,000 teachers weekly — now expanding to 68,000 high school teachers and 1.4 million learners. In Europe, Playlab is establishing partnerships in Spain, UK, and Ireland, with dedicated EU data hosting and GDPR compliance underway.
Second, a trusted partner network. In 2025, Playlab reached 80,000+ additional educators through professional learning organizations who embed Playlab into their own training — creating a multiplier effect where expertise is distributed, not centralized.
Third, open community growth. Educators share their apps publicly, creating a growing library that others can remix and deploy. One app — CERi, a science feedback tool — has scaled to 35 districts across OpenSciEd national curriculum.
In total, Playlab has reached 7.3 million students through enterprise partnerships, active across four continents. By 2026, we aim to reach 300,000 students and 40,000 educators directly.
Playlab has evolved significantly based on what we have learned from educators in the field.
In 2025, five major upgrades: a Knowledge Graph infrastructure so districts and ministries connect their own curriculum frameworks directly to AI tools — making outputs locally relevant rather than generic; deep analytics so creators can measure whether apps achieve their goals; moderation systems trained on real educational usage with full COPPA, FERPA, GDPR and ERMA compliance; full Spanish platform translation and voice input/output for multilingual learners; and integrations with Canvas LTI, Clever, and Google SSO so Playlab works inside existing school infrastructure.
We also launched two programs: the AI Lab Schools Network, where school teams design AI-integrated learning models that serve as public exemplars; and the AI Design Fellowship in NYC, where educators design and pilot AI applications focused on deepening student agency.
Our core principle through every iteration: we transfer ownership. Playlab builds capacity so that schools and systems can sustain AI use independently — not remain dependent on any single vendor.
Visit playlab.ai and create a free account. Within minutes you can explore thousands of educator-built AI applications — or start building your own using our guided app creator.
For individual educators: start with our free AI Agency 101 course — a self-paced learning journey covering how AI works, how to design AI tools for your classroom, and how to evaluate when AI is the right solution.
For schools and districts: Playlab offers partnership programs combining platform access with professional learning. Our team designs a tailored AI adoption roadmap — from initial workshops to full AI Lab School implementation, with dedicated support and organizational analytics.
For education systems and ministries: Playlab has experience operating at national scale. Our Ghana Ministry of Education partnership demonstrates how Playlab can be localized, scaled, and sustained within a national curriculum framework.
We work with organizations across North America, Europe, Africa, and South Asia — and are actively expanding in the EU with dedicated GDPR-compliant infrastructure. To explore a partnership, visit playlab.ai.
