Announcing Credly’s Acquisition by Pearson

 

This is an exciting day for Credly customers, employees, partners, and the worldwide community we serve, as we announce that Credly has been acquired by Pearson, the world's leading learning company. Pearson has played a key role in our rapid growth for many years as a partner and investor. Now, the time is right for us to combine forces in an even bigger and bolder way as we accelerate our mission to build a future of work and learning driven by verified skills.

 

We founded Credly in 2012 to help people realize their full potential by connecting their verified skills to opportunities. Every day, we advance this mission by empowering organizations to make better human capital decisions and build more equitable workforces with trusted information about what people actually know and can do.

 

Our combination with Pearson accelerates the realization of this vision. Together, we will provide powerful solutions for the global workforce learning and talent market, and scale our impact by improving the lives of millions worldwide.

 

Credly will join Pearson's other recent acquisition, Faethm, at the heart of the new Workforce Skills division. Like Credly, Pearson's focus is on driving positive outcomes for the workforce. Our solutions bring together workforce analytics, learning and assessment capabilities and robust credentialing to help employers understand labor market dynamics and future-proof their workforces, and help workers gain the skills needed to boost their employability.

 

The full Credly team remains in our current roles, and we will continue to operate as Credly, Inc., and with the Credly brand, as part of Pearson. Customers and credential earners will continue to enjoy the industry-leading experience they've come to expect from Credly.

 

 

Joining forces will fuel Credly's growth and help us serve the rapidly evolving needs of the modern labor market, allowing us to do more together:

 

From our founding, Credly helped catalyze a movement to empower people with verified evidence of their achievements, creating the market for digital credentials in which we lead. Credly was recently named one of the fastest-growing companies in North America. And the combined strength of Credly and Pearson will see us innovate even faster, unlocking more value for customers and creating more opportunities for individuals to achieve their full potential.

 

 

This exciting move combines Credly's expertise in the skills economy with the global scale and learning expertise of Pearson. More than 2,000 organizations use Credly today, including many of the world's largest organizations. Since its inception, the company has issued 50 million credentials to 25 million consumers, making it the world's largest professional credentialing marketplace. Pearson's financial strength and expertise in workforce skills make us an even stronger partner to our enterprise customers. And Pearson's global scale means that in working together, we will accelerate our ability to deliver positive career outcomes in more regional and local labor markets.

 

The Credly team has grown very quickly. More than 40% of our colleagues joined us in the last 12 months alone. Today's news not only means we'll continue adding amazing talent, it also helps us invest in our people, opening up exciting new growth opportunities.

 

 

We have always had a strong relationship with Pearson both as an investor and as a partner, collaborating on strategy and in serving customers. The alignment runs deep:

 

Both Pearson and Credly care deeply about fostering greater equity and access to opportunities. You'd be hard-pressed to find two companies who are as well-aligned on their missions and the future they are building.

 

One of Credly's core values is to "Earn Trust Every Day." This relates to everything we do, from helping people build trust in their skills, to helping organizations build trust in their brand and the standards they set. Earning trust is also acting with integrity and transparency, being a good steward of data, and building for good. We have a like-minded partner in Pearson, with the long-term thinking and global footprint to manifest these values at scale.

 

Credly has joined forces with a partner who shares our values and respects the culture which has driven our success. Our strong relationship has got us to this point and it will help us grow in new and exciting ways, providing a wonderful foundation for our team to thrive and allowing us to continue to delight our customers and earners.

 

Thank you for being part of this journey with us so far. We look forward to what we all do together next.

 

Jonathan Finkelstein

CEO

Credly, Inc.