Industry News

Pearson Acquires Credentialing Provider Credly

• By Rhea Kelly
• 01/31/22

Pearson today announced the $200 million acquisition of Credly, expanding its presence in the workforce skills sector.

Credly's credentialing platform allows organizations, companies and educational institutions to award employees and learners digital credentials that verify specific skills and competencies and help connect those abilities with job opportunities. To date, Credly has issued 50 million credentials to 25 million consumers, making it the world's largest professional credentialing marketplace, according to a news announcement.

Pearson originally invested in Credly in 2018 and already owns a nearly 20% stake in the company. Now Credly will join Pearson's Workforce Skills division along with recent acquisition Faethm, an AI and predictive analytics company focused on workforce trends.   

"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, in a statement. "Credly complements our other recent acquisition — Faethm — to address the full learner journey, enabling us to work with employers and employees to identify skills needs, provide learning to address those needs and offer trusted credentialing to prove proficiency."

"This exciting move combines Credly's expertise in the skills economy with the global scale, learning expertise and financial strength of Pearson," commented Jonathan Finkelstein, founder and CEO of Credly. "Joining forces accelerates the realization of our vision to build a world where every person can achieve their full potential based on their verified skills and where organizations can make better human capital decisions and build more equitable workforces using trusted information about what people know and can do."

Pearson stated that the full Credly team, including Finkelstein, will remain with the company and Credly will "continue to do business as usual under its new ownership structure."