Leading AI edtech wins big at prestigious awards honoring the “best of the best”

Breakout Learning’s groundbreaking AI-powered learning format has won the bronze medal in the Education category of the 2024 Edison Awards. The honor was announced at a ceremony attended by company executives in Fort Myers, Florida last evening.

Established in 1987, The Edison Awards™ is among the most prestigious accolades honoring excellence in new product and service development, marketing, human-centered design and innovation. All nominations are reviewed by a steering committee and panel composed of more than 2,000 business executives and academics from the fields of product development, design, engineering, science, marketing and education, as well as past winners. Entries are judged on four Edison Award criteria: Concept, Value, Delivery, and Impact.

Breakout Learning CTO Joshua Oster-Morris, CCO Steven Walters and Head of Finance & Operations Jake Shepherd at the 2024 Edison Awards Gala

“We’re grateful for—but not surprised by—all the industry recognition we’ve been receiving, and what makes this Edison Award especially meaningful is the emphasis on social impact,” said Ramit Varma, CEO of Breakout Learning. “We’re using AI to return human interactions to our educational system and in doing so, hope to solve one of society's most pressing problems: how do we return civil discourse to our national consciousness? This award attests to the power of that vision and our frontrunner status in achieving it.”

Breakout Learning delivers educational content to students in online breakout rooms and then prompts small-group discussions which are moderated and graded by AI, providing instructors with valuable insights that lead to better classroom discussions. Launched last fall, the company’s platform is already in use at over 50 business schools including 15 of the top-20 business schools according to the U.S. News rankings.

“When we were nominated for this award last fall, our Beta product was in a handful of schools and since then, we’ve made huge strides in product development and customer adoption,” said Breakout Chief Content Officer Steven Walters, who attended the ceremony along with Chief Technology Officer Joshua Oster-Morris and Head of Finance & Operations Jake Shepherd. “We’re excited by this acknowledgment of our team’s hard work and early success using AI to unlock the power of discussion-based learning, but also know that we’re just scratching the surface in terms of our impact.”