Want to raise the next Elon Musk or Lisa Su? Better start early. Agrawal’s Kira Learning teaches computer science basics to K-12 students. In 2021, she and fellow Stanford alumnus Andrea Pasinetti cofounded the online coding school, which has helped some 10,000 students and teachers learn and teach programming and AI skills. The startup recently added an AI companion, built on large language models like GPT-4, to detect mistakes in a student’s code. Palo Alto, California–based Kira Learning has raised $22.5 million in venture funding at a $75 million valuation, with more than $2.5 million in revenue so far this year. “Computer science is a pretty scary subject,” Agrawal says. “We’re thinking about how to make learning this technology more accessible, motivating and engaging for beginner learners.”