1 Startup · $13.3M · Higher-Ed Enrollment AI

What they're building

EdVisorly's EddyAI platform automates the paperwork layer of college admissions and enrollment: reading student transcripts, recalculating GPAs against each institution's specific rules, mapping transfer credits to degree requirements, and routing admissions workflows. Institutions using it report cutting manual processing by up to 85% while increasing admissions data-processing productivity more than sixfold, per the company. Crucially, the software doesn't make admissions decisions — it removes the drudgery around them. For the 10.5 million US community college students hoping to transfer to four-year universities, the student-facing side turns a guessing game into an unofficial credit evaluation: upload a transcript, see exactly how credits map, what a degree costs, and how many semesters remain — before ever speaking to a counselor.

Why this matters

Higher education is being squeezed from both ends — more applications and transfer-credit volume to process, fewer staff and tighter budgets to do it — and much of the workflow still runs on decades-old systems or literal hand-processing. That's why a mission-heavy syndicate (Lumina, Strada, U.S. News) joined a conventional lead in a sector where funding has cratered from its 2021 peak: EdVisorly raised a step-up round in a down market, which is its own signal. Founder and CEO Manny Smith (Manuel Smith III) is an Air Force veteran who built satellite systems for the Air Force, a first-generation graduate of the Air Force Academy, and a Berkeley Haas MBA — he started the company in 2019 after seeing how badly transfer students were served. With 100+ institutional partners including Carnegie Mellon and UConn, this is now infrastructure procurement, not edtech experimentation.