Following our launch of The Definitive Guide to Corporate Learning, where we detail the enormous shift from formal training to AI-powered content and enablement, the vendor market is moving fast. In this article I want to highlight a few major vendors so all the HR leaders and CLOs can get a sense of what’s going on.
The big use-cases for AI in corporate training are clear: dynamic content generation, AI-powered coaches or scenarios, AI-fueled needs analysis, AI-generated skills models, AI-powered skills assessments, and of course AI-centric learning through Supertutors, chatbots, conversational interfaces, and AI generated personal experiences.
In many ways learning and enablement is the PERFECT use-case for AI, so you can invest in these tools right now.
Imagine a personal AI agent (one that knows who you are, your role, level, and experience) that is always there to teach you, constantly updated with new information about your job, career, and company. It’s here!
The problem we face is that about a $4 Billion has been invested in old LMS systems, old content libraries, old content development tools, and millions of people who know how to deliver training in the “non-AI” world.
Let me explain what some of the major vendors are doing, so you can start to get a sense of this massive new landscape.
End to End Learning Platforms
First let’s talk about the LMS side. New vendors include Sana (our partner with Galileo and Galileo Learn), Docebo (who has AI-enabled its entire suite, including content development, coaching, simulations, and AI-powered learning administration), Cornerstone (who has launched Galaxy, its AI-fueled skills-based learning and talent system with more to come), Arist (a hot fast-growing vendor who can generate content from AI-fueled needs assessment and much more), Uplimit (an AI native platform for highly engaging technical and other high stakes training with many AI scalable features), 360Learning (AI generated content, AI companion, AI-generated assessments, adaptive learning), Disprz (AI-Native end to end learning platform with dynamic content development), and many more.
Whatever LMS you have, if they aren’t moving to a dynamic content model (post-SCORM) you need to look around. Many LMS vendors are smallish companies so they may or may not have the team or focus to make this architectural shift, but it’s happening fast and once you’ve used an AI-Native platform you won’t go back. I know that OpenAI has integrations with Coursera, but I wouldn’t call them a corporate learning platform.
AI-Powered Content
The second massive part of this space is courseware, content, and instructional material.
All the major players (LinkedIn Learning, Coursera-Udemy, Skillsoft, Pluralsight, Degreed, and many more) are now using AI to summarize courses, give you live Q&A into the library, and essentially deliver a CoPilot that sits next to their legacy content for access, learning, and ease of use.
The whole idea of “Learning in the Flow of Work” is enabled with these content agents, so even if you’re not ready to convert your entire course library to AI content, you can access it all now.
There will be many more of these platforms, and I sense the “content market” will shift to one of “content intelligence platforms” (like Galileo) and you, as a customer, will access all this material through the vendor’s agent, your own agent, or a third party “agent of agents.” In other words, the slow “blocking” process of building a course will be done by AI, and vendors will focus on getting their hands on world-class content, labeling, and competency models.
If I think about how fast AI has become a code generation system and how well NotebookLM can author instructional podcasts, it really seems that “course builder” companies have to think about themselves as “expertise curators,” which is unlocked by their platforms.
The third new innovation is AI-fueled assessment. If you look at CodeSignal, for example, they use AI to build dynamic assessments for skills assessment, targeted learning, and recruiting. This is a massive new market, one that will eventually replace test-based certification and even pre-hire assessments. You can “train” CodeSignal to understand your product, your company, or whatever you need and it will generate an experience (with tests, exercises, simulations, and feedback) to help the person “become proficient” in that area. Pluralsight is doing the same. Other vendors like Hackerrank are moving in this direction, and most LLMs can do this natively.
For example we have trained Galileo in all our research and maturity models, so it can ask you a series of questions (we call them “agentic prompts”) and assess your personal or organizational maturity, it can generate development plans, and it can compare your skills to others based on its massive corpus of job, skills, and HR-related information.
AI-Powered Skills Intelligence
Next is the big messy area of skills. While many skills vendors exist, this space has settled down and vendors like Eightfold, Findem, Maki People, Seekout, Lightcast, and other recruiting providers can assess employee skills at a very granular level. They’ve mostly used this tech for recruiting and internal mobility, and that has led to vendors like Gloat, Fuel50, and 365 Talents to build out those solutions in detail. Vendors like Skyhive (now Cornerstone Galaxy) and Techwolf use AI to infer skills using external and internal data, and more and more of these vendors are now connecting to learning.
I recently talked with Docebo (the only publicly traded LMS company) who just acquired 365 Talents. They are now focusing on integrating these systems so a big company like SNCF or Airbus can assess skills across the organization and immediately see learning offerings relative to each skill. Cornerstone has also done this with Skyhive and vendors like Sana do this as well. Sana, by virtue of it’s AI-nativeness, can also tell you how “advanced” you are in a skill just by watching your activity.
Employee Enablement and AI-Search
Finally, let me discuss one of the biggest opportunities of all: dynamic enablement. Imagine you’re a call center rep and you get a problem you’ve never seen. Rather than search for a course that may help you (while the customer listens to music), you just want to “ask the question and get an answer,” possibly with a video to help. Well today this “dynamic enablement” form of learning is fairly easy!
With an AI-native platform and a well designed search (AI copilot), you could literally post videos or call recordings of people solving tough problems and “enable people” to learn from them dynamically. This is the magic of what Sana, Arist, Docebo, and many others can do. Think about sales training, new company rollouts, product launches, or the myriad of “real-time information updates” we want people to know about. This is a massive opportunity.
Employee Enablement has not traditionally been owned by L&D (or HR), rather it kind of falls into IT or Sales or Support. Well now, with an AI-powered “learning platform” you can store all your company documents and business relevant recordings or information and let local business teams run their own “enablement platforms.” This fundamentally frees L&D from lots of this local support and eventually helps your company build what we call the “digital twin.” (The knowledge of every individual is made available to anyone else who has access.)
While the “digital twin” category is not defined (it needs a better name), think about it this way. Your company’s emails, internal documents, meeting recordings, sales recordings, and call center recordings essentially form the “organizational intelligence” of your company. If you put all that into an AI platform you could ask it any question and it would know how to find the answer. (We do this today with a product called Viven from Wisdom Labs.) Vendors like Glean do this in the IT space and I believe L&D leaders will do this with Sana or Docebo, for example.
How long does it take you to build a podcast, course, or video when something new takes place? Well that’s too long – imagine if the knowledge or information was available to others immediately. I know Microsoft and Google are working on this, and I think the “enablement” model is going to really change L&D.
The Basics Don’t Go Away
Despite the articles about “the end or courseware” I think many of the basics of employee development will remain: compliance training (albeit it could be more personalized), new hire training, leadership development, and most “new to the job” situations require formal instruction. So all your experience in learning design still makes sense.
But the toolset, dynamic development, personalized delivery, and enterprise search platforms are spectacular. Go talk with your incumbent vendors and see where they’re going – if you don’t sense enough speed and agility to move in this direction, it may be time to shop around.
PS: we regularly help companies transform their L&D strategies so if you’re just getting started we’d be happy to assess your situation and guide you into this exciting new world.
If you’re a vendor and want help with strategy or marketing, please also reach out.
Additional Information
The Definitive Guide to Corporate Learning: Reinvention in the Age of AI
2026 Imperatives for Enterprise AI: The Road Ahead
