In a recent interview, Sam Altman predicted that soon the first 1-person unicorn will be built using AI. While we're not quite at one person yet, at Knowunity, a lean team of fewer than 60 employees is already pushing the boundaries - using AI to personalize education for over one billion students globally. That’s with less than half the headcount of comparable companies at the same stage, proving that impact doesn’t have to scale with size.
Their engineers are solving complex problems daily: building distributed systems which handle more than 300M LLM requests per month, managing massive amounts of data and user-generated content, perfecting real-time personalization, and enabling multi-language and geography support.
As the #1 AI learning companion, Knowunity delivers a personalized educational experience, adapting to each student’s challenges and needs through multimodal study paths. It is powered by its foundation of 3 million proprietary, localized content pieces - created by students for students.
In less than five years, Knowunity has scaled to over 20 million students in 17 markets. Backed by €27 million in fresh Series B funding led by XAnge, Knowunity is doubling down on its mission to become the world’s first AI learning unicorn. Remarkably, this global impact is being driven by a deliberately lean and agile team.
So how does a company this small achieve something so big?
Rethinking Product Ownership: The Full-Stack-First Approach
Knowunity embraced a model of radical engineering ownership. Their team is primarily made up of AI and product engineers who own the full requirement journey, rather than relying on the traditional role of Product Managers. PMs are the exception, not the rule - used only in specific cases and if so, extremely ownership-focused. Engineers take full responsibility for entire product flows - from development and QA to launch and success metrics.
“It's about owning the entire product journey”
Knowunity’s design system enables engineers to take strong ownership of features, making them directly responsible if something breaks or underperforms - and empowering them to fix issues immediately. This approach eliminates any "not my job" mentality, ensuring clear accountability and rapid resolution. Designers play an equally active role, leading weekly product reviews with full founder involvement and continuously evolving the design system to stay tightly aligned with user needs and engineering workflows. In fact, the lines between these disciplines are increasingly blurring due to AI-powered engineering tools like Cursor and Windsurf, which allow individuals to work fluidly across Engineering, Product, and Design, unlocking new levels of autonomy and impact.
Benedict describes their product organization structure as a KPI tree, where every engineer is directly accountable for specific metrics that tie into broader product goals. This can include top-line output metrics like ARR or Daily Actives, or input metrics that drive these top-line figures, such as funnel conversion or user activation. This structure allows individual engineers to maintain very specific priorities, while the organization as a whole consistently works towards improving its main north-star KPIs. Transitioning to this full-ownership model, moving away from traditional product squads focused on narrower areas, has been a crucial learning and a major catalyst in accelerating Knowunity’s shipping speed.
Engineering Velocity: The Secret to Knowunity’s Weekly Releases
“Shipping three releases each week is our normal cadence”
One of their secret weapons for maintaining this speed is their self-built A/B testing tool. "Every engineer can trigger, monitor, and analyze their own A/B tests independently. No bottlenecks, no waiting for a dedicated team," they confirm. At the individual level, this drives immediate feedback, rapid iteration, and data-driven decision-making directly into the hands of developers. Even for larger initiatives, such as the shipment of full new modules like the mock exam flow, work is structured in focused, short iterations that keep goals clear, minimize context switching, and drive high completion rates on what matters most.
Beyond Engineering: The AI-Native DNA at Knowunity
“A consumer company has to be absolutely lean across all functions, so we prioritize hiring generalists over specialists in most cases”
This philosophy infuses every aspect of Knowunity - not just engineering. Whether it’s recruiting, customer support, or sales, every role is staffed with AI-native talent. When evaluating candidates, he explains, "We want to keep a diverse and multifaceted team. However, we have a tendency towards extremely driven, very hungry, and often young people. We realize that people who grow up AI-native are often much faster to learn and adapt because the market is changing so rapidly, where standard CVs and experiences become obsolete quickly." These young talents are then complemented by strong senior leaders across various roles, especially on the engineering side, ensuring that speed and ambition are grounded in experience and long-term perspective.
Knowunity's embrace of this lean, AI-native model directly translates into significant operational efficiency. For instance, Benedict cites a "relevant reduction in headcount" across various departments, including a notable decrease in customer support, which was streamlined from 7–8 people to just 1.5, while improving response times from several hours to under 12 minutes. He does caution, however, that not all functions are ready for full automation, noting that some areas, like sales, still require human involvement as AI tools are not yet fully mature.
What’s Next? Building the Tech Org of the Future
Knowunity demonstrates how AI is fundamentally changing organizational structures, both on the tech and business sides.
“ No one knows how the perfect tech org is going to look like in three years”
For him, it's crucial that the organization remains as flexible as possible to adapt rapidly, and this simply works better with a leaner team.
“We want people who are flexible, who want care about our students and drive initiatives themselves. We emphasize contribution over rigid job titles, understanding that responsibilities are constantly evolving.”
Help Transform Education: Join Knowunity’s Journey
Does radical ownership, hyper-speed impact, and an AI-native environment sound like your next challenge? Knowunity is expanding its team, inviting visionary talent to revolutionize education across Product, Engineering, and Growth: Jobs at Knowunity
This journey is supported by Valerie Bures, Partner and Head of DACH, and Jennifer Bemert, Senior Associate.
