Upstack AI · Company Overview
Built to mark university physics.
Which is why it marks anything.
Upstack AI builds one assessment-and-learning engine, deployed as two products. LearnLab teaches a class and proves the class learned it. WorkLab screens applicants and proves an applicant can do the job.
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What Upstack is
One engine. Two orbits.
Upstack AI is an AI software house, founded in late 2022, with the UAE entity — Upstack AI FZ-LLC — incorporated in Ras Al Khaimah in 2025. We wrote one engine and deployed it twice, into the two places where the same question gets asked: did this person actually learn it, and can this person actually do it?
Teaching and hiring look like different industries. Underneath, they are the same problem — set work, mark it honestly, and show your reasoning.
Education
LearnLab
Builds learning modules from an educator's own material, assesses students on it — including written and mathematical work — and returns cohort analytics the same day. Students need no accounts; everything travels by link. Sold to universities, schools and corporate learning teams, pilot first.
Recruitment
WorkLab
Turns one shareable screening link into a full pipeline — CV parsing, a job-specific assessment and an AI interview — and returns a ranked shortlist with the evidence attached. Sold self-serve to hiring teams and agencies, from $49 per month.
The shared engine
It was built to mark quantum mechanics.
Most platforms scale multiple choice and quietly give up on everything else. Upstack started in a physics department, where the answer that mattered was a derivation with the working shown — so the hard case came first. That is the whole heritage argument: an engine that can mark a quantum-mechanics derivation against a lecturer's rubric can mark a compliance test, a written case study or a candidate's SQL without being redesigned.
Read the material
A syllabus, a policy, a job description, a CV. The engine works from documents a human already owns rather than a generic question bank.
Generate the work
Modules, assessments, interview plans — grounded in that source, at a stated difficulty, varied per person so no two papers are identical.
Mark against criteria
Meaning-based marking against the rubric a human wrote, with partial credit where the reasoning is right but incomplete.
Return the evidence
A score, the rationale behind it, the weak points named, and a log of how the work was done — not a number on its own.
The person in charge stays in charge
Marking is AI-assisted and human-final on both sides of the company. In LearnLab, every AI mark is overridable by the educator, and work can be re-marked against updated criteria and re-sent. In WorkLab, the AI ranks and the recruiter decides, with manual-review gates before anyone is advanced or rejected. Both products are built in alignment with the principles of the EU AI Act — transparency, human oversight and documentation — and run on AWS with region-flexible deployment where an institution requires it.
Proof
Three years in a physics department.
LearnLab is the platform behind a pedagogical innovation project in the Department of Physics at Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon (2023–2026), run with continuous consulting from Prof. Filipe Joaquim, PhD in Physics and Associate Professor in the department. Three academic years of continuous deployment, marking derivations rather than just multiple choice.
Read the department's announcementAcademic years of continuous deployment
Student satisfaction, IST student surveys across the project
AI grading accuracy across the project
WorkLab in production
Case 01
2,600 applicants, five roles
Twenty-five pre-qualified candidates returned in 28 minutes, each with the assessment evidence behind the ranking.
Case 02
Twelve roles, four countries
Time to shortlist went from three weeks to 48 hours, with a full audit trail per candidate.
Case 03
One link, 4,200 candidates
The top three percent — 126 people — were forwarded automatically to the hiring managers.
"Upstack was founded in late 2022 with a mission to build custom AI tools that solve real problems. We quickly found our niche in education technology, developing AI-powered assessment and learning tools that could handle complex subjects where traditional testing falls short."
Rahill Ismael · Co-Founder, Upstack AI
Who we serve
Two products means two ways in.
Institutions start with a scoped pilot and expand on their own evidence. Hiring teams start with a link and a card. Partners take either, or both.
| Segment | Product | How it starts | Entry offer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Universities | LearnLab | Pilot-first, with department heads and digital-learning leads, then expand across the faculty | Term pilot, scoped pricing |
| Schools & school groups | LearnLab | A single-school pilot first, then rollout across the network | Fixed pilot price |
| Corporate learning | Both | One team, one programme, one quarter, with the head of learning or the CHRO | Enterprise licence or pilot |
| Agencies & RPOs | WorkLab | Reseller, white-label or volume terms — screen faster and place better | From $49/month |
| Hiring managers & founders | WorkLab | Self-serve from the site, built for roles that draw more applications than a person can read | Free plan, then from $49/month |
| Government · education | LearnLab | National licensing or pilot-and-expand, opened with a ministry working session | Custom |
| Government · employment | WorkLab | Screening infrastructure for employment services and Emiratisation programmes | Custom |
| Distributors & resellers | Both | Commission, white-label or volume models across either product | Partner terms |
Why the UAE, and why now
The UAE EdTech market was valued at $1.35 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $3.5 billion by 2034 (IMARC), inside a global AI-in-education market growing at 23.6% CAGR to 2030 (Grand View Research). AI became mandatory across UAE K-12 from the 2025/26 academic year, reaching roughly 300,000 students, alongside Project NOVA, the UAE AI Strategy 2031 and We the UAE 2031.
Upstack AI is an independent company building in alignment with these national visions. It is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any government entity.
Meet the Team
Small team. Big impact. We're agile, focused, and moving fast to disrupt traditional software.
Leadership
Rahill Ismael
Co-Founder & Innovator
Rahill@upstack.ai
Visionary technologist driving innovation across multiple sectors. Leading the charge in disrupting traditional software approaches.
Antonio Lagartixo
Co-Founder & Head of Partnerships and Sales
Antonio@upstack.ai
Builds the partner network that carries Upstack into new markets, and owns sales from first conversation to signed deal.
Core Team
Mafalda Salazar
Head of BD
Mafalda@upstack.ai
Kashmira Singh
Head of Growth
Kashmira@upstack.ai
+ Network of skilled developers worldwide
Collaborating on cutting-edge projects
Next step
Bring your own material. We will mark it live.
Fifteen minutes on a call. Send a syllabus and we build a module and an assessment in front of you, or send a job description and we run a screening link end to end. Either way you see what comes back before anyone talks about a contract.
Upstack AI FZ-LLC · Ras Al Khaimah, UAE