The CLN Future Ten

In the ever-shifting landscape of Learning and Development, the obligation to adapt to an unpredictable future has led CLN analysts to curate a distinguished list. This collection of the top ten L&D vendors is not just a mere compilation, but a strategic curation aimed at equipping your business for success in today's ever-evolving world.

As we venture into this list, we'll unravel the rationale behind our selection of these vendors. These visionary solutions have been chosen for their future-thinking mindsets, cutting-edge vision, and innovative technological platforms, all poised to assist today's leading companies in nurturing both personal and organizational success.

Our journey begins with the acknowledgment that while the future remains uncertain, we can make educated assumptions based on the rapid transformations we've witnessed over the past year in L&D. The intersection of challenges such as fostering workplace coherence in the digital/hybrid age, navigating economic fluctuations, and the advent of Generative AI alongside the ever-advancing technological landscape has accelerated the need for businesses to adapt swiftly and efficiently. As we unveil these insights, you'll gain a comprehensive understanding of why these vendors stand out as CLN’s prime choices in today's dynamic landscape.

Blinkist

Launch: Blinkist was founded as a B2C service in 2012 and expanded into the B2B sector in 2019.

Funding: Blinkist was acquired by Go1, an Australian L&D content aggregator in May 2023.

Delivering whole-person-focused content through ~15-minute book and podcast explainers, Blinkist makes bite-sized, personalized learning journeys possible for modern professionals and their teams. Learning goes beyond these explainers with Blinkist, as members explore Guides, “mini master classes” driven by the ideas from subject matter experts, and create and interact in Spaces to recommend and share content and ideas like a virtual book club. With 27 learning categories, an integrated AI companion to guide the experience, and easily accessible analytics for L&D or team leads, Blinkist supports a new wave of self-directed learning with unique opportunities to address skill gaps and organizational change.

Skillable

Launch: Skillable was founded and launched in 2004.

Skillable offers a hands-on approach to learning that prioritizes education over traditional training methods, or, in other words, performance-driven learning over knowledge-based learning. Additionally, Skillable addresses a key challenge for companies: validating that a potential employee has the skills and readiness to do the job before placing them into the role or handing over responsibility for a task. The Skillable platform presents scenarios and challenges to learners, allowing them to practice how they would act if the situation was presented in real life. Leaders and learners can both view a summary of their skills after the experience, with both reports of skills mastered and those that need improvement.

Tigerhall

Launch: Tigerhall was founded in 2018 and the main product was launched on March 1, 2019.

Funding: Tigerhall has raised $10.8M, including $7M Series A backed by Sequoia Capital and Monk's Hill Ventures. 

Targeting engagement in learning and organizational transformation, Tigerhall creates original content with expert “thinkfluencers” and delivers it to the user in bite-sized digital content pieces of their preferred format, whether that’s written, audio, or video. Their most popular format is their podcasts, which can be listened to or read in text format. Tigerhall also works with learning leaders to develop custom content of the same high value for organizations. The collaborative component of the Tigerhall platform mirrors social media in that users can follow each other, see activity through feeds, and communicate about thoughts and ideas gleaned through insights and dialogues. Leaders within each organization can create their own content and are able to livestream, which has led to many companies adopting Tigerhall to use for internal communications such as town halls, strategic initiatives, and product updates. Tigerhall is the answer to the “water cooler” office chit-chat in an increasingly digital world.

Zenerate

Zenerate offers a hands-on learning experience with a futuristic personal AI coach for learners. To illustrate its unique value proposition, let’s take a common use case: customer service training. First, users can log in and watch a video example to illustrate the concept of fielding calls from customers with key scenarios that arise. Then, users practice taking calls with the help of an advanced AI coach with natural language processing and understanding that responds to what the learner is saying in real time. Finally, users can handle taking live calls with the support of the AI coach. Lessons are customizable within organizations, and the AI coach offers an unbiased learning environment – for instance, it will not rate users poorly for sounding less confident as long as they have a full understanding of the course material.

Versity

Launch:  Versity was launched in May 2023.

Funding:  Versity is wholly owned by Endeavor (NYSE: EDR)

Versity, an Endeavor company, addresses a crucial gap in the current L&D landscape, developing tailored content for early career learners. Versity courses bring together expert professors from leading universities and influential celebrities in developing the power skills most relevant to effectively navigating today’s workplace, such as communication, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking. The video-first platform integrates engaging digital features such as interactive polls, video reflections, and social collaboration for learners to view themselves and their peers within the experience. Versity aims to deliver lasting personal growth for employees and accelerated leaders for employers, helping early-career learners through first-time managers take an active role in their career development.

Obrizum

Launch: Obrizum was founded in 2015 and the main product was launched in 2019 after thorough research and development of their technology.

Funding: Obrizum’s current total funding is $17M with Seed and Series A, with main investors Guinness Ventures, Beaubridge, Juno Capital Partners, Qatar Science, Tech Holdings and Celeres Ventures.

Obrizum is an award-winning, multi-patented, enterprise learning technology and analytics company trusted by blue-chip organizations, governments, and defense organizations worldwide. The Obrizum cloud platform enables companies and organizations, in any sector, to automatically create, deliver, and monitor adaptive digital learning and assessment experiences at scale. Utilizing the power of AI, Obrizum saves significant time and resources by analyzing an organization's proprietary content to build adaptive learning courses >10x faster than by traditional means. The platform then navigates learners through content and assessments in real time, taking them on a highly efficient, precision-personalized journey which matches their level of understanding, confidence, and self-awareness. This real-time AI guidance enables valuable productivity recapture across the workforce by accelerating the time it takes learners to complete courses by up to 5x when compared to linear modalities with improvements in completion rates. In addition, Obrizum’s AI-powered Intelligent Search allows learners to ask questions in natural language and have the platform rapidly surface contextually relevant answers and factually accurate summaries from trusted content within their company's learning portfolio.

Consistent with their mission to be the world leader in the measurement of human knowledge transfer in digital environments, Obrizum’s market-leading content and learner analytics provide data-driven insights into content performance, knowledge, skills, confidence, self-awareness, and more. These diagnostic insights power risk reduction, better resource allocation, and a host of other operational efficiencies.

Arist

Launch: Arist was founded in 2019 and launched in August 2020.

Funding: The funding is Series A and the lead investors are PeakSpan, Craft, and YC, with $17 million raised so far.

Arist delivers a time-effective and user-friendly solution by distributing short, manageable courses over the platforms learners already use for work, including Teams, Slack, SMS, WhatsApp, and Outlook. Content can be created and built from scratch or customized from over 100 pre-existing Arist courses. Learning leaders also upload existing SCORM, video, or PDF to be instantly conversed into Arist lessons with AI. Arist solves challenges such as lack of learning time and long content creation times with 5-minute per day lessons, AI-derived courses that launch 7x faster, and reducing time to competency by over 20%.

Unboxed

Launch: Unboxed was launched in 2009 with their digital product launched in 2014.

Funding: Self-funded

Unboxed is a values-based organization that offers holistic solutions through strategy and consulting, custom training content, and a learning & skill-building platform. Unboxed offers several prebuilt curricula or works with clients to create unique courses. In a constantly shifting global landscape, the company focuses on skill agility and building skills at the pace of change. Users love the simplicity of the product as well as the collaborative, social aspect, driving high engagement. AI-driven feedback is recorded and analyzed for learners to gain a full understanding of their progress and for learning leaders to make inferences or take action based on patterns and trends.

GP Strategies

Launch: GP Strategies was founded in 1966.

Funding: GP Strategies is part of the Learning Technologies group, which is traded publicly on the AIM stock exchange.

GP Strategies Corporation is one of the world’s leading talent transformation providers. By delivering award-winning learning and development solutions, GP Strategies helps organizations transform through their people and achieve meaningful change. GP Strategies has delivered innovative consulting, learning services, and talent technology solutions to over 6,000 organizations globally. 

GP Strategies’ global staff of expert learning specialists, combined with its transformation focus and custom solutions, deliver superior business results. Whether your initiative requires developing the skills of your talent, the implementation and adoption of learning technologies, or refining critical processes, GP Strategies is a transformation partner you can trust. 

Class

Launch: Class was founded in 2020.

Class incorporates a variety of key components for collaborative and effective corporate learning into the technology a majority of the workplace is already familiar with: Zoom. In the platform, learners can leverage comprehensive chat features to discuss ideas and insights. Learning leaders have the ability to create courses utilizing templates and set up quizzes and polls for workplace learners. Further, Class integrates with an LMS, HRIS, or SSO and enables learner data analytics for insightful decision-making.