Santa Monica-based startup Toucan announced Tuesday that it raised an additional $4.5 million in seed funding to expand its language learning technology. The company raised $3 million in its initial seed round last September.
“This is just the start of the big vision for the Toucan Team. I’m so stoked to have this incredible group with me to go and build that future,” Brandon Dietz, Toucan co-founder and CPO, tweeted at the time.
Instead of operating through a separate app with daily lessons, Toucan meets users wherever they’re at online. Toucan’s browser extension exchanges a few English words on a webpage with words from another language. The tool provides readers with the opportunity to immerse themselves in a new language without feeling completely lost.
Toucan currently covers seven languages — Spanish, French, Korean, German, Italian, Japanese and Portuguese. Users can hover their mouse over each translated word for its definition.
The extension is free to download on Google Chrome and Safari. A premium option is also available that translates more words per page and lets users save words to review later.
“Learning a new language is challenging, fun, and rewarding. It also takes time, practice, and dedication — finding a few extra minutes in the day can feel impossible,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement.
This year, Toucan flew past 60,000 active users, more than doubling the size of its user base.
With the additional capital, the company plans to hire for its team and expand the number of languages it offers on its platform by the end of next month, according to dot.LA.
Toucan has raised a total of $7.5 million in financing to date.
LightShed Ventures led the round with additional participation from Next Play Ventures, Concrete Rose Capital and GingerBread Capital, among others.
