Increase in acquisitions and investments
The UK learning sector has seen an increase in acquisitions and investment activity: Looop, Virtual College and Walkgrove are amongst those acquired since the start of 2022 and Learning Pool has acquired True Office, an adaptive learning tech provider.
Learning News has reported on five significant acquisitions in the first two weeks of January alone. First was the Spanish elearning provider, Netex's acquisition of Virtual College, giving them a strong, new foothold in the UK market through Virtual College's wide and established customer base. The new combined business will turn over around £17 million in 2022.
On the same day Walkgrove announced it was acquired by the Nordic region's largest provider of digital courses, Semcon, as it, too, eyes expansion in the UK.
Another to invest in the UK market is 360Learning. In October it announced an investment fund of $200M for growth and upcoming acquisitions, and earlier this month made the first of these when it acquired UK LMS vendor, Looop.
Learning Pool has announced the acquisition of New York-based adaptive compliance tech business, True Office. It predicts where compliance risks are running high and uses artificial intelligence to target learning interventions to mitigate them. The technology will be integrated into Learning Pool's Stream LXP, where it believes it will have a significant advantage over LMS-based compliance solutions.
To look at these deals and find out more about the changing structure of the workplace learning market, Learning News spoke to learning systems market analyst, Fiona Leteney, from Fosway.
Check out more Learning News interview features with learning sector commentators.