Pearson, the world’s leading learning company, today announced it has acquired Credly, the market leader in digital workforce credentialing. The acquisition of Credly, in which Pearson already has a nearly 20% stake, will expand the company’s presence in the workforce skills sector, adding a robust credentialing service to its workforce analysis, learning and assessment capabilities. The purchase price for Credly, including Pearson’s existing stake, represents a total value of $200m, which will be funded from Pearson’s existing cash and available liquidity.
Credly offers an easy-to-use platform for organizations, companies and educational institutions to award employees and workers trusted digital credentials that verify their skills and help connect them with the right opportunities. The company’s talent mobility solutions help businesses recruit, engage, and develop their workforce, with a skills-based approach to talent management that operates at enterprise scale. More than 2000 organizations use Credly and since its inception, Credly has issued 50 million credentials to 25 million consumers, making it the world’s largest professional credentialing marketplace.
The combination of Credly and Pearson will create a powerful solution to help serve the massive global workforce learning market, now estimated at c.$400bn. Credly will join Pearson’s other recent acquisition – Faethm – at the heart of its Workforce Skills division with both complementing the company’s expertise in reskilling and workforce learning. The full Credly team, including Finkelstein, will join Pearson. Credly will continue to do business as usual under its new ownership structure.
“The Credly acquisition is another important step in accelerating our strategy in the workforce skills market and in building connectivity across the entire Pearson portfolio. The growing skills gap is putting enormous pressure on the labor market, making verified credentials more essential than ever before,” said Andy Bird, chief executive of Pearson.
Source: PR Newswire
