Sofia Norenko, is the CEO of Readalot.ai, a Charlotte startup revolving around a platform that creates customizable stories for kids aged 3-12. The surprise? She isn’t all that much older than that target audience.
Norenko founded the platform in June of 2025 when she herself was a middle school student—and avowed reading enthusiast—in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system.
Norenko’s father, Dmitry Norenko had previous experience as the founder of his own AI-driven platform dedicated to helping companies develop more efficient workflows. He encouraged his daughter to start her own business, and Sofia Norenko ultimately decided she wanted to help other kids learn to read with a tool that would both entertain them and encourage them in their own creativity.
Creating original (and educational) stories
With Readalot.ai, the development process is simple, according to the younger Norenko.
“We give AI a prompt, and it makes short, fun, and interesting stories,” she explained.
Specifically, young users of the platform, or their parents, can craft their own narratives featuring themselves as the main characters. They might go on an underwater adventure, launch into space to see distant planets or discover a hidden magical forest (to use a few examples that have already been created through the platform). If they love the story they create, they can save it to their own personal library.
While students or their parents create their stories and read through them, Readalot.ai embeds educational content designed to help the students progress to the the next levels of reading comprehension for which they are in line. This content originates from federal and state educational programs, but parents can also upload “custom learning materials,” as Norenko put it, for specific subjects.
Users can select the story subject and length, and typically educational questions come at the end of each chapter, enabling students to work through the lessons at their own pace.
“It helps focus more on, like, paying attention for their kids; like, if they want to move on to the next chapter, they have to actually think and pay attention to the story and what they want to be about,” Norenko said.
As a younger student, Norenko did not enjoy reading. She hopes that, for students like her, the platform will provide a more engaging manner of developing vital literacy skills.
Deploying Readalot.ai
Norenko said that the students who have used the platform thus far have enjoyed that they “get to have their own story in a few minutes” and that they can “be the characters and endless possibilities.”
Ilia Davydchuk, Chief Technology Officer of Readalot.ai and an experienced software and backend developer for Dmitry Norenko’s Graphio.ai, said the platform makes teaching reading easier for parents: Instead of searching endlessly for the right book for their child, they can create something customizable for them in just a few minutes.
Norenko said the tool is also meant to be useful for educators in the classroom. Although Readalot.ai remains in its early stages as a startup, the platform has already developed a partnership with Kennedy Middle School—Norenko’s own former middle school—within Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, for the upcoming school year.
One important question that came from educators at the partner school was whether the platform could prevent users from inputting information not appropriate for the classroom. Norenko said that Readalot.ai already incorporates safety measures within the service to prevent such scenarios. (According to Readalot.ai’s website, the platform uses advanced AI safety filters and reviews every story for age appropriateness. Each story on the platform is also marked for the recommended age group.)
Norenko herself creates stories for the platform multiple times a week, imagining what she or her sister may find engaging. The process of building the lessons has quickly become more efficient, according to Norenko—originally taking around 20 to 30 minutes, now closer to 10.
She and the rest of her team—comprised of four other students along with Davydchuk—earned an equity-free $250 grant from The Boost Pad, a sustainable business development service based in Charlotte, following their completion of the organization’s mentorship program. Norenko noted that Ally executives, NC IDEA leaders and local credit unions were among the audience members at an event awarding Boost Pad participants.
The grant money will be used to continue growing the company and its development platform.
QUICK BITS
Startup: Readalot.ai
Founder: Sofia Norenko
Founded: 2025
Team size: 5
Location: Charlotte
Website: readalot.ai
Funding: Bootstrapped
Davydchuk, whom Norenko said currently funds the programming for Readalot.ai, said the software required to maintain the platform is relatively inexpensive and scalable; it relies on “cues and processes,” so the jobs of audio generation, image generation and text generation are separated during the development of the story for users.
“We use the best model for our generator to create all these stories and all these images,” Davydchuk said. “That’s why it’s so simple for a kids’ course.”
With one school partnership secured, Norenko plans to continue her outreach to educators in her district, specifically within elementary schools, that could benefit from the platform. Although Readalot.ai currently operates as a free platform, the intent is to form long-term paid contracts with schools as the platform catches on.
“If the kids would actually be interested in trying this and giving it a few minutes and trying multiple stories in the end… this will be a great choice instead of buying new books,” Norenko said.
