Curiously and Prentix combine to form Curiously, giving every learner multiple high-quality work experiences through social capital and student initiation.

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, August 11, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Curiously and Prentix today announced they have joined to form a single company, operating as Curiously, that teaches students how to initiate their own work experiences using tactical networking guidance and on-the-job coaching. The new company brings together Prentix’s student-initiation curriculum with Curiously’s multimodal AI evaluation and reflection technology. This fall, Curiously will begin bringing this model to learners across high schools, colleges, and workforce organizations.

THE INSTITUTIONAL BOTTLENECK BEHIND THE WORK EXPERIENCE CRISIS
Despite growing institutional commitment to work-based learning, there’s a significant gap between students who want hands-on experience and those who get it, with only about 30% of college students who seek an internship finding a high-quality opportunity, according to the Business-Higher Ed Forum‘s research.

This gap exists because institutions have historically stood between students and employers, curating experiences on their behalf, a model that hasn’t scaled to every student due to institutional capacity constraints. Curiously takes a different approach: rather than asking institutions to broker every opportunity, it equips students to activate relationships and initiate opportunities themselves.

TEACHING STUDENTS TO TAKE THE LEAD
In work-based learning and job seeking alike, human connection is key: most internships and full-time roles are obtained through networking, and yet students aren’t learning the skills required to take initiative in building their own opportunities.

Curiously teaches learners, step by step, to build the skills and confidence to unlock their own work opportunities, starting with the social capital already in their lives and adults who want to support them. From there, Curiously stays with students through the experience itself, coaching them through scoping their work, managing up, asking for feedback, and building an evidence base of what they’ve learned along the way.

For institutions, this grows the capacity of an entire community. As students activate alumni and recruit professionals into the fold, each cohort generates more opportunity for the next, a virtuous cycle rather than a fixed resource.

Three capabilities power Curiously’s results:
1. Voice-based reflection, so each student is supported to process what they’re learning in their own words.
2. Multimodal artifact ingestion, which reviews diverse forms of student work and networking conversations to surface feedback and collect insights about each student.
3. The insight hub, an AI-powered memory layer for each student that grows with them and helps them reflect on their evolution over time.

BUILT TO SCALE WITH EVERY STUDENT
Because students do this work themselves, institutions are no longer limited by how many relationships their staff can personally broker, making it possible for institutions to envision experiential learning as part of graduation or degree requirements. This fall, Curiously will begin working with high schools, colleges, and workforce organizations to bring this model to life.

ABOUT THE COFOUNDERS
Rebecca Agostino began her career in the classroom as a special educator, and then founded and led a high school in Camden, NJ. She later served as VP of Learning at Multiverse, where she helped scale apprenticeship programs across the U.S. and U.K., partnering with Fortune 500 businesses to equip young adults with the core technical and durable skills to succeed on the job. She founded Prentix in 2025 and began developing and testing the student-initiation curriculum that forms the foundation of Curiously’s new product.

Dr. Yipu (Alison) Zheng trained as an engineer and then earned her doctorate at Teachers College, Columbia University, where her award-winning research focused on building AI to support collective knowledge building. After graduation, she founded Curiously, aiming to build easy-to-use and trustworthy multimodal AI infrastructure for education. The platform won the Catalyst Prize at the Learning Engineering Tools Competition, is backed by an innovation grant from the U.S. Department of Education, and today powers student initiation through high-quality personalization and evaluation.

ABOUT CURIOUSLY
Curiously’s mission is to give schools, colleges, and workforce organizations a way to offer high-quality work experience to every student. The company equips students with the skills, confidence, and tools to be in the driver’s seat of their own career progression. Cofounders Rebecca Agostino and Dr. Yipu (Alison) Zheng formed Curiously by combining their respective companies. Learn more at www.curiously.app.

Rebecca Agostino
Curiously
rebecca@curiously.app

Dr. Yipu (Alison) Zheng
Curiously
alison@curiously.app

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