In the era of AI accelerating its penetration into various industries, AI skill training has become more important than ever before.
Accenture (NYSE: ACN), a global consulting firm, recently announced its acquisition of online education company Udacity and plans to launch the AI native learning platform Accenture LearnVantage later this year. It plans to inject $1 billion into the platform within three years for talent development in the AI era. The transaction amount for this acquisition has not been disclosed.
After the acquisition is completed, over 230 Udacity employees will join Accenture LearnVantage. The latter provides industry-specific training, including specialized courses in artificial intelligence and data science, cloud and network security training for IT professionals, and Gen AI training for board and top management members as well as business leaders.
Udacity is a unicorn of online education in Silicon Valley, USA. It was founded in 2011 by Sebastian Thrun, the founder of Google X and the father of Google's autonomous vehicles, and is known as the "University of the Cloud". During his time as a professor at Stanford University, Thrun founded the free online course "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University", which later inspired him to create Udacity.
Udacity's early courses focused on fields such as computer science and mathematics. Due to the high cost of this business, the company began a gradual transformation in 2015, focusing on vocational skills training. At the end of the same year, Udacity completed a Series D financing of $105 million, which resulted in Udacity's valuation exceeding $1 billion.
Udacity has also started as a free, large-scale open online course (MOOCs) provider and gradually developed into a platform that provides vocational online education services.
The reason why Accenture likes Udacity may be related to two abilities.
One is that Udacity courses focus on cutting-edge technological fields such as artificial intelligence, data science, cloud computing, etc. This aligns with what Accenture is about to do, which is the AI native learning platform Accenture LearnVantage, which aims to help customers retrain and enhance employee skills in technology, data, and artificial intelligence, "to reshape the organization and achieve greater business value.".
Secondly, in the crowded skills training market, Udacity excels at combining content with a "network".
For example, in its early years, it helped Google launch an Android development course, nurturing and certifying hundreds of thousands of Android developers worldwide, witnessing the popularization and development of Android. At the same time, we have strengthened our cooperation with technology industry giants. Beyond Google, Udacity's network extends to companies such as Amazon and IBM.
In terms of course design, Udacity provides students with practical projects and case studies that match their actual work scenarios, and some courses are even directly designed by these companies to ensure that what students learn is highly aligned with industry needs.
This transaction also reflects a significant trend, namely the increasing demand for training and enhancing employee skills in the field of artificial intelligence, reflecting the urgent need for digital transformation in enterprises.
According to Accenture's research, business leaders have stated that their biggest challenge is the inability to improve employee skills, with 51% of organizations seeing the negative impact of the worsening IT skills shortage. 94% of employees expressed a desire to learn new skills in using generative artificial intelligence, but only 5% of organizations provide large-scale training in generative artificial intelligence.
This "marriage alliance" also indicates that the boundary between education and corporate services will be further blurred, moving towards a more integrated direction.