Global education company Pearson announced on September 29 that it will acquire Workera, an AI-native skills platform used by organizations including ServiceNow, Accenture, and the United States Space Force to assess employee capabilities and identify training needs. The deal, expected to close in the second half of 2026, comes just days after Workera published its 2026 State of Skills Intelligence Report on September 23, which highlighted a growing disconnect between AI adoption and workforce training. Together, the firms aim to establish what they're calling the gold standard for workforce readiness in an AI-driven economy.
Workera's report found that nearly 70% of workers use AI regularly, yet almost 60% have no time to upskill. The findings suggest a widening gap between how quickly employees are integrating AI tools into their daily work and how little time organizations are providing for formal training. The data points to tension between business leaders and working professionals over how to build AI capabilities in the workplace.
According to Workera CEO and founder Kian Katanforoosh, the company's latest program, Ambient, is designed to measure skills in the flow of work rather than through separate assessment sessions. "If you manage to merge work and learning, you're effectively helping someone learn exponentially more than in the past," Katanforoosh told ZDNET. The AI-native assessment tool is currently being piloted with over 10,000 signups on the waitlist. In the announcement, Vishaal Gupta, president of enterprise learning and skills at Pearson, said that combining Workera's workforce and technology with Pearson's expertise in learning and assessment "strengthens our ability to help enterprises close skills gaps faster and build more agile and capable workforces."
The acquisition reflects Pearson's push to strengthen its corporate training offerings with adaptive skills assessments at a time when demand for workforce AI training is accelerating. Workera's technology is built to give business leaders a real-time baseline of their workforce's capabilities, including AI fluency, targeted development, verified outcomes, and better talent decisions across the board, according to the press release. Pearson hopes its legacy in the education sector can help create a new era of AI skills training when combined with Workera, which was founded in 2019. The acquisition addresses what the report identified as a critical challenge: organizations need to find more common ground on how to upskill for an AI-enabled world, particularly when traditional training models pull employees away from their work.
Once the deal closes, Workera will become part of Pearson's Enterprise Learning & Skills business unit, and Katanforoosh will join its leadership team. The partnership aims to bring Workera's AI technology and Pearson's assessment expertise to what Katanforoosh described as "a shared ambition: building the gold standard for workforce readiness and helping people achieve more than they thought possible." The move signals that enterprises are looking for training solutions that don't require employees to step away from their jobs to learn new skills. Companies that can embed assessment and development directly into the workflow may hold a decisive advantage as the race to build AI-literate teams intensifies, especially when workers themselves report having almost no spare time for traditional upskilling programs.