Mississauga student named top 10 finalist for $100K prize

A Mississauga student is a top 10 finalist for a $100,000 global prize.

Krishiv Thakuria has been named a top 10 finalist for the Chegg.org Global Student Prize 2025, an annual $100,000 award. The award is given to one exceptional student who has made a real impact on learning, their peers, and society at large.

Krishiv is the only Canadian to make the shortlist.

“Huge congratulations to Krishiv on being named a top 10 finalist,” said Nathan Schultz, president and CEO of Chegg, Inc., said. “Your work is bold, thoughtful, and deeply needed. You’re not just solving problems; you’re lifting up communities and showing the world what’s possible when passion meets purpose.”

Krishiv and fellow Mississauga student, Samantha Fung, were selected as top 50 finalists from nearly 11,000 nominations and applications from 148 countries.

At 17, Krishiv, a The Woodlands Secondary School student, is pioneering how AI can make education more accessible for all.

A first-generation Indian-Canadian student and tech founder, Krishiv is the inventor of Aceflow, an AI tutoring platform used in over 20 countries, and Charm Bears, AI-powered talking teddy bears that help students with dyslexia learn without screens, Chegg said in a press release.

His innovations have earned him global recognition: he has spoken at GITEX Global, Microsoft Canada, World Summit AI, and Stanford’s ASES Summit.

At 16, he interned in machine learning at BenchSci, one of Canada’s biggest AI companies, and after that, he worked as an AI engineering consultant at Simple Ventures, which is a leading Canadian venture studio backed by the co-founder of Shopify.

Krishiv is also a Masason Foundation Scholar and Harvard Ventures Fellow, and plans to attend university to study electrical engineering or robotics.

If Krishiv wins, he plans to make a large donation in honour of his late principal, Omar Zia, and fund a multilingual rollout and clinical validation of Charm Bears.

Zia, a principal at The Woodlands Secondary School, died in December after a brief battle with cancer. Krishiv said Zia encouraged him to give talks on AI education with teaching staff members.

“He was really good guy, so I definitely want to make a large donation in his memory,” Krishiv told INsauga.com in August.

Chegg.org partnered with the Varkey Foundation to launch the annual Chegg.org Global Student Prize in 2021, a sister award to its $1 million Global Teacher Prize. The intention was to create a powerful new platform to shine a spotlight on extraordinary students who are reshaping communities and the world through innovation, leadership, and service.

The award, now in its fifth year, recognizes extraordinary achievements of young change-makers from around the world. Mississauga students have made it into the top 10 in 2022 and in 2024.

The prize is open to all students who are at least 16 years old and enrolled in an academic institution or training and skills programme. Part-time students as well as students enrolled in online courses are also eligible for the prize.

Last year’s winner was 18-year-old Ángela Elena Olazarán Laureano from Mexico, who helped create Ixtlilton, an AI-powered virtual medical assistant that can diagnose 21 diseases based on a series of questions.