Photomath

Photomath, founded in Zagreb in 2014 by Damir Sabol, is an app that solves math problems by recognising the equation through a smartphone's camera and showing the step-by-step solution, not just the final answer. It quickly became the leading app in its category in Croatia and many international markets, and for years stood as a case study in mobile edtech even before the generative AI era. May 2022 marked a watershed moment: Google announced it would acquire Photomath for an undisclosed sum, a deal approved by the European Commission in March 2023 and completed that June. It was the largest startup acquisition in Croatian history, seen by many observers as a strategic move by Google in response to the emergence of ChatGPT and growing competition in AI applied to education. Since then, the product's evolution has followed its parent company's priorities: the subscription-first strategy that defined Photomath as an independent app has been progressively de-emphasised in favour of a data-driven model, where the billions of math problems solved by users over the years are used to train and improve Google's language models — notably Gemini — on mathematical reasoning. Future plans point to deeper integration of Photomath's features directly into Google Lens and Google Search, rather than maintaining a standalone app with its own distinct commercial identity. Photomath's story is an emblematic case of how Big Tech acquires niche edtech assets less for their original business model than for the value of the proprietary data accumulated — data that feeds the training of next-generation AI models.