Draft:Units (school)
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Comment: In accordance with Wikipedia's Conflict of interest guideline, I disclose that I have a conflict of interest regarding the subject of this article. Danielgorg9 (talk) 04:48, 26 May 2026 (UTC)
| Units | |
|---|---|
Canada and United States | |
| Information | |
| Type | Private |
| Established | May 2026 |
| Founder | Daniel Martinez |
| Website | units |
Units (also known as Units School; previously VibeGrade and GradeAssist) is an AI-native online secondary school headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The company was founded in 2024 by Canadian entrepreneur Daniel Martinez as VibeGrade, an AI grading tool for teachers, and pivoted in 2026 to focus on full-stack secondary education under the Units brand. The school issues Ontario Secondary School Diploma credits through accredited partner institutions and offers a curriculum centred on mastery-based grading, AI-assisted learning, and portfolio-based assessment.[1]
History
[edit]Origins as VibeGrade (2024–2025)
[edit]The company was founded in 2024 by Daniel Martinez, then a International Baccalaureate student in Ontario, who built an AI grading tool he initially called VibeGrade (later renamed GradeAssist). The product was designed to give teachers rubric-aligned feedback in their own writing style within tools such as Google Docs, Google Classroom and Canvas, and was reportedly adopted by more than 12,000 teachers.[1] The product and its founder were profiled by Forbes in April 2025.[1]
Shortly afterward, Martinez was accepted into the Y Combinator startup accelerator. His Ontario high school formally removed him from enrolment one semester before graduation, citing his relocation to San Francisco for the program, despite the remaining coursework being available online.
Pivot to Units (2026–)
[edit]In 2026, Martinez and his team pivoted the company from B2B teacher tooling to a direct-to-student model: a full-stack AI-native online high school issuing accredited secondary credits. The new product was launched as Units. The original VibeGrade and GradeAssist tooling was retained as the underlying assessment infrastructure within Units' platform. The company was a member of Y Combinator's Spring 2025 batch.[2]
Pedagogy
[edit]Units' curriculum is structured around three pedagogical principles the company refers to as "axioms": curiosity, critical thinking, and application. Each course requires students to produce a published artifact — such as a video, written article, shipped software, or pitched campaign — as part of their final assessment.
Assessment is structured in three layers the school terms Create → Defend → Critique:
- Create: students complete a real-world artifact, with generative AI tools explicitly permitted.
- Defend: students answer probing questions about the choices they made in producing the work.
- Critique: students evaluate AI-generated work and identify weaknesses, demonstrating their ability to distinguish high-quality from mediocre output.
The school operates on a mastery-based grading model in which a student's grade reflects their current demonstrated understanding rather than an average of past performance.
Credentialing
[edit]Units issues credits toward the Ontario Secondary School Diploma through partnerships with inspected private schools in Ontario authorized by the Ontario Ministry of Education. The company has stated it intends to pursue independent accreditation through Cognia for its United States operations.
Locations
[edit]Units operates online from Toronto, Ontario. The company has announced plans to open a physical campus in Austin, Texas in fall 2026, with additional campuses in New York City and Toronto planned for subsequent years.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]External links
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Category:Online schools
Category:Private schools in Ontario
Category:Y Combinator companies
Category:Educational technology companies of Canada
Category:Educational organizations established in 2025
Category:Schools established in 2025
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