Headway Inc Raises Series A from Bullhound Capital to Scale EdTech 3.0 Globally

KYIV, Ukraine — 10 July 2025

Ukraine-based consumer edtech company Headway Inc has secured its first external investment, closing a Series A round from Bullhound Capital — the global tech investor known for backing Spotify, Klarna, and Slack. The deal marks the largest investment to date from Bullhound’s €1 billion Fund VI and one of the most significant first institutional rounds for a Ukrainian startup since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Bullhound Founder and Managing Partner Per Roman will join the company’s board. Writing on LinkedIn, Roman said:

“I am so proud to support Anton Pavlovsky and several hundred employees with their families in Ukraine — while also doing what I think will become an amazing investment for our Bullhound Capital 6th fund.”

The amount raised and company valuation were not disclosed, though the funding is described as part of a broader phased capital raising strategy. The funding will accelerate Headway Inc’s expansion into global markets, support new product development, and deepen its investment in generative AI. A new European hub in Madrid will drive regional growth and brand visibility.

Founded in 2019 by CEO Anton Pavlovsky, Headway Inc began as a bootstrapped venture with a single product. While the edtech hype cooled, the company kept building.

“We stayed focused. Built. Learned. Listened,” Pavlovsky wrote on LinkedIn. “And now we’re getting a major boost for scaling what works — globally, sustainably, and with purpose.”

That focus has paid off. Headway Inc now operates five products — Headway, Impulse, Nibble, AddMile, and Skillsta — and has surpassed 150 million downloads across 170+ countries. The company reports 100% year-over-year growth and is already profitable.

It also recently ranked No. 4 on TIME and Statista’s list of the world’s 350 top edtech companies — ahead of Duolingo and Coursera — selected from over 7,000 global firms based on financial stability and industry impact.

While Headway’s flagship app made its name with digestible summaries of bestselling nonfiction, the company has since transformed into a full-scale AI-powered learning ecosystem. Its approach to "EdTech 3.0" focuses on adaptive, personalized, and gamified tools designed for digital-first generations.

Pavlovsky calls it a new era of lifelong learning:

“This partnership marks the beginning of a new era in lifelong learning for Gen Z and millennials — generations often written off as distracted. We see something else: untapped potential.”

Across its portfolio, Headway integrates AI-driven features like personalized onboarding flows, gamification engines, speech coaching, and chatbot-style learning with historical figures such as Oscar Wilde and Joan of Arc. The apps tackle everything from soft skills and cognitive training to coaching and habit formation.

What sets Headway apart is not just its content, but its scale and feedback loop. The company processes petabytes of user interaction data annually, using that information to fuel a continuous innovation cycle.

Headway has built what Pavlovsky describes as a data flywheel — a compounding advantage where each experiment, A/B test, and behavioral insight feeds into all products across the platform. Successful optimizations in one app are rapidly deployed across others, creating a self-reinforcing loop of growth and product improvement.

“As our products become more effective and engaging, they attract even more users, who in turn generate additional data and insights. This cycle fuels the flywheel, creating a self-sustaining momentum,” Pavlovsky wrote.

The deal is more than a business milestone — it’s a story of wartime resilience. Headway Inc closed the largest first institutional funding round for a Ukraine-founded tech company since 2022. Its success stands in contrast to the headwinds facing the region.

Roman emphasized that Headway’s mission aligns with Bullhound’s broader investment thesis.

“Their vision is closely aligned with Bullhound Capital’s mission to disrupt outdated systems and champion the use of AI tools to solve real-world problems,” he wrote.

Bullhound Capital manages more than €1 billion in assets and has recently invested in companies like Multiverse Computing, EcoVadis, and Sanity through Fund VI, which focuses on late-stage, category-defining software ventures.

Pavlovsky sees the partnership as a long-term alliance built on shared conviction.

“This isn’t a deal built overnight,” he wrote. “It’s a strong vote of confidence in our vision, our momentum, and in the transformative power of lifelong learning.”

Headway Inc is targeting an IPO in 2027.