Degreed Plots A Comeback With Major AI Announcements
Degreed is one of the most interesting business stories in the HR tech space. Founded in 2012, the company pioneered the idea of a Learning Experience Platform (LXP) to let anyone find and consume any form of learning. The original vision, which was well ahead of its time, was to democratize content beyond the clunky LMS (learning management system) and liberate anyone to find, consume, and publish any form of learning.
It worked. In its early days Degreed was the darling of L&D vendors and the company attracted 300+ of the world’s largest customers as fans. I met an HR leader at a large bank in Pittsburg and she told me “I know every skill we have in the company because all the information is in Degreed.” I didn’t want to argue with her, but it was clear Degreed had pulled something off.
Unfortunately, as with all pioneers, the fast-followers came running with their bows and arrows. Vendors like EdCast (now owned by Cornerstone), Microsoft, LinkedIn, and many others built these platforms so the market suddenly got crowded. Degreed was well ahead (content integrations, skills tools, assessments, pathways), but of course these guys caught up. So now, doing business in a crowded market, the company faltered in its growth.
There were several CEO changes and a somewhat frustrated product plan, so the market started to move on. L&D teams bought other products and Degreed, now as a turnaround, spent lots of time trying to reinvent itself. Should the company build an LMS? Sell content? Or somehow try to outmarket and outsell all these competitors?
Well along comes AI, and now the play is public: Degreed is going all-in, and the strategy really makes sense. I met Max Wessel the new co-CEO about 18 months ago, and he and I discussed the massive role of AI in corporate training. Max, coming from SAP, totally understood the potential, so we discussed a strategy for Degreed to become a leader in “AI-powered Corporate Learning.”
This week it’s public, and I want to say it makes a lot of sense. As I talked about in my latest podcast (How AI Is Blowing Up The Corporate Learning Market: The Whole Story), we are poised to see the biggest reinvention of corporate training since the internet. And this new world, which will radically change how L&D works (and likely what we call it), is begging for leaders to show the way. I believe, if Degreed does this well, they can greatly assist this massive transformation.
What did Degreed launch? Two major things: first is the AI platform Maestro, which is essentially a chat-like tutor, AI platform, and learning assistant for companies. Maestro (and Maestro Studio) lets companies injest their current content (subject to licensing) and create a chat, tutor, or assistant-oriented experience for learning. Rather than replace your core platform with Sana, Uplimit, Docebo, or another of the new “AI-First” platforms, Degreed can bring you AI as you are.
This massively improves the experience we have with learning, and essentially redefines the LXP. And given Degreed’s large customer base and strong relationships with every content provider, this is an “Instant Win” for Degreed customers. Of course there are many competitors (the vendors above plus custom chatbots of your own), but Degreed moves you to AI-driven content consumption almost immediately.
The second is more interesting, a product named Open Library. (Name is not my favorite but the idea is terrific.) Degreed built a bunch of agents (“swarms of them”) to find open source content on 500 of the world’s most common learning topics in business. Using that “scraping process” they build courses and pathways for each, available at no cost. This means you can stop paying for LinkedIn Learning or another library and rely on Open Content for much of your core corporate education. This is a very big idea.
As we build out more in Galileo (our AI platform), I see more and more opportunity to curate and organize public domain content every day. Nobody wants to do a search for “project management” stuff in YouTube and the internet to learn something, there’s too much junk, marketing, and old content to deal with. What if you had an intelligent AI that looked at all of it, tried to vet what’s new and most authoritative, and only showed you this? It’s a brilliant idea, almost like what Google’s page-rank did for search.
I haven’t seen a lot of the content yet, but I know this idea is sound. And imagine if all 300+ Degreed customers use it: the authority ranking and “swarms” will get smarter. So this product, to me, is quite interesting to explore
Where is all this going? This gives Degreed the oxygen and leadership to grow again. While the AI-powered learning space is about to get white hot, those of you who know and like Degreed are going to be very interested in these offerings. I know all the competitors are also active, but to me this is a turnaround possibility for the company.
Stay tuned for much more on L&D coming up. Not only are we finalizing a major research study on the “L&D Revolution,” we’ll be launching a whole new version of Galileo for learning at Irresistible. I want to congratulate Max and the entire team at Degreed for pulling this off: this company is now on a new path to growth, let’s see how well they can keep up the pace.
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