Photomath — AI Camera-Based Step-by-Step Math Solver, from Zagreb to 300 Million Downloads

Photomath was founded in Zagreb, Croatia and first launched publicly at TechCrunch Disrupt London in 2014. Students point a smartphone camera at a handwritten or printed math problem, and the app uses computer vision and AI to recognise the problem and generate a step-by-step solution rather than just a final answer.

By 2021 the app had been downloaded more than 220 million times; by the time Google announced its acquisition in May 2022, downloads approached 300 million with tens of millions of monthly active users, and Photomath held the #1 spot in the education category of national App Stores in the US, Brazil and Indonesia. The deal, completed in June 2023 after European Commission review, was reportedly the largest startup acquisition in Croatian history.

Academic interest in Photomath's classroom effect has grown alongside its user base, with a number of small quasi-experimental studies in secondary-school settings reporting improvements in test scores or self-reported confidence after structured use. The published literature is mixed, however: several of the same studies caution that unsupervised use can encourage students to copy step-by-step answers rather than build independent problem-solving skills, and no large, independently conducted randomized trial was found. Photomath itself is a consumer-facing tool with no built-in teacher dashboard or classroom-management layer, so its evidence base sits closer to 'widely adopted' than 'rigorously proven.'