LONDON — Global learning and testing giant Pearson announced on Tuesday an agreement to acquire Workera, a Silicon Valley-based startup specializing in artificial intelligence-powered skills verification and enterprise assessments.
The transaction marks Pearson’s latest strategic push into corporate upskilling, aiming to address mounting corporate anxiety over workforce readiness in the age of generative and agentic AI. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 2019 in Palo Alto, California, Workera operates an adaptive assessment platform that combines agentic AI, psychometrics, and role-specific simulations to benchmark what employees can actually do, rather than relying on self-reported résumés or static quizzes. The roughly 60-person startup serves high-profile enterprise and defense clients, including Accenture, ServiceNow, and the U.S. Space Force.
Following the acquisition, Workera will fold into Pearson’s Enterprise Learning & Skills unit. Workera’s co-founder and chief executive, Kian Katanforoosh, will join Pearson’s leadership team.
The deal highlights how corporate learning providers are racing to quantify the return on their talent investments. Companies worldwide are pouring billions into AI initiatives, yet human resource leaders frequently struggle to identify internal skill shortages or verify whether upskilling programs are producing tangible outcomes.
“In the era of AI, an organization’s ability to assess and develop skills will be key,” said Vishaal Gupta, president of Enterprise Learning & Skills at Pearson. Gupta noted that integrating Workera’s adaptive testing engines with Pearson’s broader educational ecosystem will help enterprise clients identify capability baselines and direct workers to targeted training programs.
For Workera, the tie-up provides the scale and distribution of a multinational company operating in roughly 200 countries with nearly 18,000 employees.
“We built Workera to harness AI so people can discover what they’re capable of, organizations can recognize talent they might otherwise overlook, and learning can lead to progress you can actually see,” Katanforoosh said in a statement.
The acquisition is slated to close in the second half of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
