I've written many times about the immersive learning market, each time pointing out the incredible learning power of these platforms. Now that consumer VR headsets like the Meta Quest and Apple Vision-Pro have arrived, this market is poised to explode.
Today, Cornerstone, a $1 billion+ leader in corporate learning platforms, announced the acquisition of Talespin, one of the leaders in tools and content for immersive learning.
What is immersive learning?
Teachers and instructors know that the only way we truly learn is by “learning by doing.” And this understanding has led to the development of simulations, role plays, war games, and hundreds of other interactive learning experiences. In fact, every “big learning” experience I've had in my life started with a memorable (or frightening) experience that taught me, “Never let this happen again.”
This is difficult in corporate training. Companies like Shell and his AT&T are developing simulators, games, and interactives to teach people things like oil drilling practices, repairing telephone systems, and even how to safely enter manholes without falling and damaging equipment. We spend tens of millions of dollars on unique experiences. Even companies like Starbucks, Disney, and Walmart require such solutions. You can't really learn how to deal with angry customers, traffic surges, and lost children at a theme park without some experience.
The problem, of course, is that these experiences are difficult to build. Immersive Learning, pioneered by companies like Talespin and STRIVR, has built tools and platforms that make this easy. That's why organizations like Walmart, Bank of America, Verizon, Sony, Accenture, MGM Resorts, and even his Sprouts Store use these platforms. The value is high: PwC research shows that employees who learn through VR are almost 300% more confident in their skills than those who learn through other methods.
These top vendors Talespin and STRIVR are different. STRIVR focuses on realistic 3D with glasses, similar to the Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro experiences. Talespin is a software company that provides a wide range of tools and content to help businesses build immersive experiences for many applications.
Talespin specifically offers the following features and tools:
- Emotionally engaging, voice-driven learning experiences: Users can use voice-driven interactions to engage in lessons and scenarios designed to engage emotionally.
- Intuitive UX/UI for creating story-based learning narratives: The platform provides an intuitive interface for creating and tailoring story-based learning narratives using advanced logic.
- No animation or coding experience required: Users can create complex conversation simulations without the need for animation or coding skills.
- Extensive library of virtual characters, voices, gestures, and environments: Creators have access to a wide range of virtual elements to enhance the immersive learning content they develop.
- Deployable content via the Talespin app: Users can access all available immersive learning content through the Talespin app on a variety of devices, including VR headsets such as Oculus Quest, Vision Pro, and HTC Vive, as well as desktop applications. You can access it.
- CoPilot Designer: This no-code authoring tool allows authors to create dynamic, conversational learning experiences where users can practice role-playing. Easily customize virtual poses, gestures, and emotional nuances to assemble complex stories with ease.
Talespin has been a small company, but its market impact could be significant. With Talespin, you can use GenAI to build character-based content in minutes to hours instead of days to weeks. Over time, generation tools have improved, allowing companies to build realistic character-based learning at scale. (Other vendors in this space include Immerse, Osso VR, MAI, Warp Studio, etc.)
And the scale goes far beyond the wonderful characters and presences you can interact with. Talespin's modern development tools allow you to create characters with nearly unlimited response scenarios and create environments that feel like real people. This not only allows companies to build content faster, but also enables Talespin to address more complex use cases such as sales training, management training, negotiations, and ethical situations.
What does this mean for Cornerstone?
The big question is: Can Cornerstone be a leader in the new rush toward what I call “autonomous learning platforms”?
Please remember this. Currently, Cornerstone is a private equity owned company and operates primarily as a revenue generator. The company has acquired most of his traditional LMS vendors (SumTotal, Saba, EdCast), TM vendors (Halogen, Lumesse), and Grovo's content providers. And along the way, each of these companies has acquired other companies, so there are more than 20 platforms operating within the Cornerstone business.
Since Cornerstone went private in 2021, the company has continued to grow its revenue (more than $1 billion) and is probably one of the most profitable companies in HR Tech. In other words, this is a large company with a large sales, marketing, and engineering team (7,000 customers and over 140 million end users). Therefore, as a market maker, Cornerstone has relationships with most large companies around the world.
However, as AI and VR mature, the market becomes more competitive. Fast-growing vendors such as Docebo, Sana Labs, 360 Learning, SAP Litmos, Adobe, Learnupon, Fuse Universal, and Uplimit are finding success in the business. These new vendors may not have the industry depth of Cornerstone, but their systems are modern, easy to use, and often AI-enabled. Therefore, as a growth-oriented company, Cornerstone always wants to stay ahead of the curve.
They achieved this in three major ways. First, a skills system (they call it skills fabric) that allows companies to create skills classifications, assess skills, and use skills-based tools for learning recommendations, performance, and talent management. Build. and career management. It's a very crowded market, but for Cornerstone clients, these tools add a lot of value.
Second, Cornerstone has built a significant content business. The acquisition of Grovo created a content development team with development tools, courses, and customers that merged to form the Cornerstone Content unit. This group has become a reseller of corporate content, and he has probably generated over $100 million in top-line business. This makes Cornerstone one of the top 10 content companies in the market.
Third, Cornerstone is currently focused on VR and AI. As we discussed in Sana's podcast with Joel Hellermark, AI will upend L&D. For the first time in more than 20 years, we have a corporate learning platform that can capture content, generate instructional programs, and personalize experiences for every employee in your company. Cornerstone hasn't implemented something as comprehensive as Sana, Uplimit, Docebo, Alist, etc., but the acquisition of Talespin brings them closer.
There's more. An analyst (not me) estimates the VR market at $4 billion, which he expects to grow at a CAGR of 31% over the next five years (including hardware). This is a big opportunity. Integrating Talespin into Cornerstone's platform will enable the company to become the leading end-to-end provider in this space.
I've talked to some clients about this and it's a real opportunity. For example, Accenture uses her Talespin for its foundational management coaching program to provide real-world experience to young leaders. Additionally, agent characters and personalities can be customized and tailored to different audiences. A product designer told me that at Talespin, learning experts use his Dall-E or Midjourney to build characters, then use Talespin's development suite to create complex simulations and Soft skills will allow him to build a conversation for training.
There will be more to come. Platforms like Talespin (and the others mentioned above) personalize the experience to each employee, dynamically creating ratings based on activity, and allowing for nearly infinite branching during conversations with virtual characters. We can provide it. Given the rapid evolution of AI, this will likely improve in the short term.
Conclusion: Huge growth potential
VR training has been around for a while, but most companies didn't know much about it. Cornerstone's sales strength and the new buzz around Apple and Meta's headsets should accelerate this growth curve. And this has applications everywhere from operational training to leadership scenarios to safety and even first-person shooter safety. There's nothing like real-life scenarios to teach something you don't quite understand.
Can Cornerstone focus on this market and grow it quickly? That's my only question. The company has a lot going on, so I hope Talespin is okay and we see some great solutions coming out. AI and VR are clearly the future of corporate learning.
Additional Information
Autonomous corporate learning platform: Powered by AI
Interview with Sana CEO Joel Hellermark – The emergence of AI-powered learning
Virtual reality has become mainstream in corporate training