For investors
IELTS Speaking is the wedge. International education is the market.
YNova is a pre-seed company in Auckland building the AI tutor for the English tests that open international education. This page holds what we can show today, and nothing we cannot. The full pitch deck goes deeper.
Why now
Four things changed. None of them were us.
The test is huge and getting more single-skill
The IELTS partners report more than four million tests in 2023. IELTS One Skill Retake is rolling out through 2026, so a learner who fails only Speaking can retake only Speaking. Demand shifts toward targeted speaking preparation.
Source: ielts.org; IDP annual reporting
Every test is now on a computer
IELTS announced the end of paper tests from mid-2026. Computer-delivered practice that mirrors the real interface stops being a nice-to-have.
Source: IELTS announcement, March 2026
Exam boards are shipping AI themselves
The British Council and IDP now sell AI-scored practice. That legitimises the category. It also shows the gap: they sell tests and generic prep, not a teacher's marking week or a learner's first language.
Source: British Council and IDP product announcements, 2025
Voice models are cheap and getting cheaper
Real-time speech models from several providers fell in price through 2025 and 2026. Our cost of goods goes down every quarter without us doing anything. The model is not the moat, and we do not pretend it is.
Source: Provider pricing pages
We do not quote vendor estimates of the “IELTS prep market”. Where a number matters we use the exam partners’ own reporting, and we say so.
The wedge
Two things that are hard to build, in one product.
AI speaking practice on its own is becoming a commodity. Bilingual pedagogy plus a teacher workflow is not, because each has to be built properly and they have to be built together.
Bilingual scaffolding, built in
Hints and explanations arrive in the learner's own language, at a level the learner sets. Twenty interface languages and hints in 33 first languages today. No funded competitor we know of sells this; most are English-only or single-language.
A teacher's system of record
Rosters, an attention queue, marking with a NOVA draft the teacher edits, consent-bounded evidence and a school control plane. Two New Zealand schools mark on it. Nobody else in IELTS AI has the marking loop.
Honesty as product design
Every number is a labelled practice estimate. No band without evidence. NOVA never invents the answer. This makes the app look less impressive in a demo and far more trusted in a classroom.
Product depth
Go and use it. Then read how it is scored.
The fastest diligence is a Part 1 session on your phone. Everything we say about the product is checkable there.
How it works
The real screens: session, report, bilingual hints, training loop, teacher marking.
OpenHow scoring works
What is measured, what is an AI estimate, and what we refuse to claim.
OpenChangelog
Every merged change, straight from the pull requests. Momentum you can audit.
OpenPilot playbook
How a school goes live, from the runbook our staff follow.
OpenTraction we can show
What is real on 27 September 2026.
Counted from the repository and the production system, not from a forecast.
- 7 May 2026
- First commit
- 739
- Commits on main
- 161
- Merged pull requests
- 77
- Database migrations
- 2,996
- Automated tests (1,300 backend, 1,696 frontend)
- 21
- Interface languages
In use
- IELTS Speaking is live at ielts.ynova.ai, free to start, with Pro on a 7-day trial.
- Two New Zealand schools mark on the teacher portal. We name a school only with its written consent, so this page does not.
- Consent-bounded evidence, CSV roster import, a school control plane and NOVA-drafted comments all shipped in September.
- Essentially one engineer wrote the product in under five months, shipping weekly.
What we do not claim yet
- The calibration study of NOVA's estimates against teacher marks has not run. Until it has, we do not call the estimates accurate.
- TOEFL and PTE Speaking are not built. The waitlist decides which comes first.
- Pronunciation bands are AI estimates from a research model, labelled as such, not examiner-calibrated.
Team
Three co-founders, one seat each.
Helen
Chief Executive Officer
Runs the company, the schools relationships and the raise.
Bonnie
Chief Product Officer
Owns what NOVA says, how it teaches, and what the product refuses to do.
Tamil Selvan
Chief Technology Officer
Built the product: the speech loop, the scoring engine, the teacher portal and the school control plane.
Full biographies are in the pitch deck. Read more about YNova.
Roadmap
One test at a time, and the study that earns the next claim.
Next on the product: an IELTS Writing scaffold on the same coaching rules, then TOEFL or PTE Speaking, decided by waitlist demand. Next on the evidence: the calibration study of NOVA's estimates against teacher marks. We do not publish dates we have not committed to.
LIVE NOW
IELTS Speaking
Free to start. Parts 1, 2 and 3 on the four official criteria.
See the productWAITLIST OPEN
TOEFL Speaking
Opens after IELTS is solid. The waitlist shapes the beta and hears first.
Join the waitlistWAITLIST OPEN
PTE Speaking
Follows TOEFL on the same engine. Join the list to be told first.
Join the waitlist
Model
Free to meet NOVA. Paid to keep going. Schools pay for use.
Free
Daily practice with limits. No card. The way most learners meet NOVA.
Pro
About NZ$35 a month with a 7-day trial. Unlimited practice and the full report.
Schools
Priced per active learner for the weeks they are active, not per seat block, so a school pays for use. Schedule on request.
Unit costs, margins and the pricing schedule for schools are in the pitch deck. Consumer pricing is on the pricing page.
The ask
We are raising a pre-seed round to take IELTS Speaking through the calibration study and into more schools, and to open the second test. If you invest early in education or language technology, we would like to talk.
Nothing on this page is an offer of securities. Figures are dated and computed from our own systems.