Astrid Education strengthens leadership team with key hire from King

With a background from King and the Candy Crush franchise, Astrid’s new hire John Almbecker brings with him a broad experience of product development and building world-class digital consumer experiences.

STOCKHOLM, April 22, 2021 — Astrid Education (Astrid) today announced that John Almbecker has joined the educational technology startup to lead the Astrid Product team. John joins with a background of senior product roles at King (NASDAQ: ATVI) and Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA).

”We are thrilled to welcome John who will bring a new and highly valuable perspective to Astrid as we focus on driving our strategy and growth forward during this time of exceptional change to education around the world. John’s extensive experience in building fantastic products enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people globally will be of high value to Astrid as we build the future of learning”, says Andreas Kullberg, CEO at Astrid.

John was a significant part of King’s impressive growth journey. He has held a series of senior Product Management roles within the Candy Crush franchise, including Lead Producer on “Candy Crush Soda Saga” as well as starting up the King San Francisco game studio.

John is excited about his new role at Astrid, “It’s exciting to join Astrid in this early phase, it is an incredibly exciting moment in time for EdTech as a sector”, says John Almbecker. “Astrid’s vision of democratizing high-quality education for everyone via voice-based and AI-powered learning solutions comes at a pivotal moment in history for how we learn and I am excited to be a part of Astrid’s continued evolution and expansion around the world.”

About Astrid Education
Astrid Education is an education technology company applying recent breakthroughs in machine learning and speech recognition to education combined with a strong academic foundation. The company develops a voice-based and personalized English language learning platform, powered by artificial intelligence. The team consists of experienced engineers, academics, and company builders with backgrounds ranging from EF, Google, Spotify, and King. Astrid is located in Stockholm, Sweden, and Oxford, UK, and is backed by a global group of renowned tech entrepreneurs, investors, and advisers.