Krishiv Thakuria

Krishiv Thakuria, a 17-year-old first-generation Indian-Canadian student, is reimagining the future of inclusive education through artificial intelligence.

His journey began at 13, when he taught his own computer science course to a class of students with learning disabilities. That experience sparked his mission: to make world-class, personalised education accessible to all. He founded Aceflow, an AI tutor for high schoolers, which quickly gained global traction – reaching thousands of users, going viral on TikTok, and earning more than $150,000 in funding from Microsoft for Startups, Ingenious+, and Emergent Ventures. He was invited to speak about the future of education at Microsoft Canada HQ, World Summit AI, and GITEX Global – where he was the youngest speaker.

Krishiv later invented Charm Bears – voice-guided, screen-free teddy bears powered by AI that help young students with dyslexia learn through emotionally intelligent conversation. Backed by IBM for Startups and NVIDIA Inception, and piloted in Canadian classrooms, Charm Bears are built to scale globally – providing dignified learning support to children traditionally excluded by screen-centric tools.

His AI work led to winning a BenchSci challenge, earning him a machine learning internship, where he became the youngest team member working on real-world NLP applications. He has also worked with Simple Ventures’ portfolio start-ups and launched Feedback AI, a writing assistant helping students get personalised feedback.

Krishiv’s academic record is equally stellar: he is a top Gifted student, a former valedictorian, a national speech champion, and a Villars Fellow at the Villars Institute in Switzerland. He was accepted into elite programmes including the Harvard Ventures TECH Fellowship, Stanford ASES Summit, and received a full scholarship from the Masason Foundation. He was recently accepted as the youngest member of the faculty at Stanford’s Code in Place, where he teaches students across 11 countries.

Through these roles, Krishiv continues his life mission: to bridge global learning gaps using empathetic AI. He recently launched NextVoters.com, a civic education AI platform helping Canadian voters fact-check party platforms – demonstrating his commitment to informed democracies.

If awarded the Global Student Prize, Krishiv plans to honour his late principal Mr. Zia by donating $10,000 to cancer research. He would invest the remaining funds in completing Charm Bears’ hardware development, expanding to multilingual classrooms, and funding real-world educational impact studies.