Shubham Banerjee, 13, may have the most ambitious "after-school" project of all time for someone his age.
The San Jose, Calif., middle school student, who was 12 when Intel's capital investment arm funded his Braille printer prototype, doesn't plan to give up classes at the Champion School for his entrepreneurial work, Reuters reported.
Living in Silicon Valley and learning from a dad who works for an education startup, Shubham asked his parents last December how blind people read and discovered through some Google searches that Braille printers typically cost thousands of dollars.
After using Legos to build a Braille printer, he has since won a school science fair and national awards; visited the White House; and invested $35,000 of his parents' savings, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
"It was curiosity," Shubham told the Mercury News. "I'm always thinking up something. If you think it can be done, then it can probably be done."
The seventh-grader is now the founder of Palo Alto-based startup Braigo Labs, which is intended to offer Braille printers for about $350 apiece. Intel's investment makes Shubham the youngest tech entrepreneur in the world to receive venture capital funding.
"It's a classic Silicon Valley story, isn't it?" asked his dad, Neil Banerjee, who works for the education startup Kno that Intel bought last year. "Everyone else started in a garage, but (Shubham) started at the kitchen table."
While the family and an Intel Capital spokesman wouldn't reveal the amount invested, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Intel invested a few hundred thousand dollars.
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