The first prompt is a test of faith. You ask a question about a topic you know well, and you wait to see if the AI tutor can follow the thread, correct your misconceptions, and adapt its tone. It’s a quiet moment of onboarding, a user checking to see if the machine can hold up its end of a conversation. For the founders of Cognios, this moment is the entire product. Their bet is that the future of learning isn’t a playlist of videos, but a persistent, personalized dialogue with an agent that remembers what you got wrong last Tuesday [LinkedIn].
The Wedge: From Static Playlists to Agentic Tutors
Cognios is positioning itself as a decentralized marketplace where educators and experts can build and train these interactive AI mentors using their own knowledge bases, then monetize them [LinkedIn]. The student-facing promise is a dynamic, gamified experience, but the real wedge is on the supply side. By offering creators a tool to turn expertise into a sellable, always-on AI agent, Cognios is trying to solve a classic marketplace chicken-and-egg problem: attract teachers with a novel monetization path, and the students seeking personalized instruction will follow. The platform claims to be powered by Solana, using the blockchain not for currency but for credentialing, minting dynamic 'Proof of Knowledge' NFTs that evolve as a learner progresses [LinkedIn].
The Team and the Early Canvas
Founded in May 2026 by Dejan Karavla and Djuradj Djuric, Cognios presents a classic early-stage profile. The founders bring technical backgrounds in full-stack development, Web3, and AI, with Djuric also holding a role as a software engineer at VR-All-Art [LinkedIn]. Their public LinkedIn profiles frame the venture squarely at the intersection of AI, blockchain, and education, a narrative that is ambitious but, as of now, untested by public metrics like funding rounds, institutional customers, or user traction [LinkedIn]. The table below outlines the founding team.
| Founder | Role | Background Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Dejan Karavla | CEO & Co-Founder | Senior Full-Stack Developer, Web3 & AI [LinkedIn] |
| Djuradj Djuric | Co-Founder | Product strategy, platform development, AI-powered learning [LinkedIn] |
The Landscape of Counter-Bets
Cognios enters a field where the dominant form of AI-assisted learning is the general-purpose chatbot,ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude,which offers breadth but no inherent structure, monetization path for creators, or verifiable credentialing. The company’s stated differentiators are clear, but they introduce a set of execution risks that any observer must weigh.
- Creator tooling complexity. The success of the marketplace hinges on experts, who are not necessarily AI engineers, being able to easily build effective, nuanced AI tutors. If the tooling is too technical, the supply side stalls.
- Blockchain as a feature, not a distraction. For many learners, an on-chain NFT credential is an abstract concept. The product must make the value of a verifiable, portable 'Proof of Knowledge' immediately tangible, outweighing the cognitive load of crypto wallets and transactions.
- The two-sided network effect. A marketplace needs both quality tutors and engaged students. In a space crowded with free alternatives, the initial value proposition for either side must be exceptionally sharp to spark liquidity.
The competitive read is less about displacing the giants and more about carving out a specific, high-value niche: learners who want credentialed, structured pathways, and experts who want to build a scalable digital pedagogy practice.
The Next Twelve Months
For a company this early, the coming year is about moving from narrative to proof. The milestones to watch are not vague platform launches but concrete signals of ecosystem health. The first paid creators on the platform, the first cohorts of students completing credentialed pathways, and the technical demonstration of those evolving NFTs on the Solana blockchain would transform Cognios from a compelling idea into a functioning micro-economy. Any seed funding round would serve to accelerate this validation, allowing the team to invest in the creator onboarding experience that is their critical path.
The cultural question Cognios is implicitly answering is a subtle one about trust and authorship in the age of AI. It asks whether we will learn from anonymous, generalized models or from agents that carry the recognizable imprint of a specific teacher’s knowledge and style. It bets that in a world flooded with AI-generated content, we will still seek and value a verifiable chain of learning back to a human source. The product’s success hinges on whether that search for a human signature in the machine is a real user behavior, or merely a founder’s hopeful premise.
Sources
- [LinkedIn] Cognios Company Page | https://www.linkedin.com/company/cognioscapital
- [LinkedIn] Dejan Karavla Profile | https://www.linkedin.com/in/dejan-karavla
- [LinkedIn] Djuradj Djuric Profile | https://www.linkedin.com/in/djuradj-djuric
- [ZoomInfo] Djuradj Djuric Contact | https://www.zoominfo.com/p/Djuradj-Djuric/7495303844