Accenture to acquire edtech firm Udacity
Accenture has agreed to acquire Udacity, a Silicon Valley-based digital education company. The Dublin, Ireland-based consultancy concurrently announced the launch of learning platform Accenture LearnVantage.
Founded in 2011, Udacity has in the intervening years pivoted from consumer-focused online courses to corporate-focused career development courses in AI and tech. The firm has a network of 1,400 experts and a large library of exclusive content co-created with partners such as Accenture, Microsoft, and Nvidia.
Udacity has over 21 million registered users in 195 countries and provides localized course offerings in languages including English, Spanish, Arabic, and Korean.
Udacity’s team of 230 professionals will join the freshly launched LearnVantage platform, in which Accenture plans to invest $1 billion over three years. The platform will provide Accenture’s clients with technology and training services to help reskill and upskill employees in tech, data, and AI.
According to Accenture research, business leaders consider upskilling workers their top challenge. At the same time, 94% of workers want to learn generative AI skills, but only 5% of organizations offer gen AI training at scale.
“The rise of generative AI represents one of the most transformative changes in how work gets done and is driving a growing need for enterprises to train and upskill people in cloud, data and AI as they build their digital core and reinvent their enterprises,” said Kishore Durg, global lead of Accenture LearnVantage. “The addition of Udacity to Accenture LearnVantage will enable us to bring Accenture’s deep capabilities as a world-class learning organization to clients at scale, helping them build the skills of their people to achieve greater business value.”
Udacity was recently reported as an acquisition target for upGrad, an Indian edtech firm, with The Economic Times estimating a deal value of $80-$100 million. That deal ultimately fell through.
Udacity raised nearly $300 million in previous funding rounds and attained unicorn status ($1 billion valuation) in 2015. The company had approximately 350 full-time employees in 2019.
Accenture did not announce the financial terms of the Udacity acquisition, which is subject to customary closing conditions.
The consulting firm earlier this year acquired Insight Sourcing, an Atlanta-based strategic sourcing and procurement consulting firm.
