Cornerstone OnDemand buys immersive learning leader Talespin 'to redefine the future of work'

HR tech mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are continuing unabetted in 2024.

Hot on the heels of both ServiceNow and Deel closing two acquisitions in a week, as well as Workday announcing a new CEO and buying HiredScore, learning giant Cornerstone OnDemand has bought Talespin, a spatial, extended reality (XR) learning company.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

XR is an umbrella term for augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality; currently, the general XR market is worth $4 billion and expected to grow at 31% CAGR in the next five years.

Talespin is a leader in this XR and immersive learning space; founded in the US in 2015, the company boasts customers like UBS, PwC, Amazon, Standard Chartered, Pearson and Meta.

Talking about the acquisition, Cornerstone’s CEO Himanshu Palsule tells UNLEASH: “We’re taking an important step forward in Cornerstone’s journey to redefine the future of work.

“With this acquisition, we’re innovating to meet the ever-changing needs of employees and organizations with dynamic content delivered across various modalities of learning.

XR is a natural next step with Cornerstone’s robust content subscriptions, curation, creation, and insights technology to form a complete end-to-end learning content solution.”XR is a natural next step with Cornerstone’s robust content subscriptions, curation, creation, and insights technology to form a complete end-to-end learning content solution.”

'The beginning of massive disruption in L&D'

For HR industry analyst Josh Bersin, Cornerstone’s decision to buy Talespin is “the beginning of a massive disruption in L&D coming this year”.

This is because immersive learning truly allows employees to learn by doing – PwC research found that employees who learn through virtual reality (VR) are almost 300% more confident in their skills than those who learn in other ways.

What makes Talespin’s offering particularly exciting for Bersin is not just the XR element, but its leveraging of AI; the industry analyst is clear that “AI and VR are clearly the future of corporate learning”.

In a blogpost, Bersin wrote: “With Talespin you can use GenAI to build character-based content in minutes to hours, instead of days to weeks.

Content at UNLEASH is emblematic of what the audience expects to hear from truly top tier speakers who are highly knowledgeable about the key issues facing workforce technology today. JOIN UNLEASH AMERICA 7-9 MAYContent at UNLEASH is emblematic of what the audience expects to hear from truly top tier speakers who are highly knowledgeable about the key issues facing workforce technology today. JOIN UNLEASH AMERICA 7-9 MAY

"Over time the Generative tools are getting better, enabling companies to build lifelike character-based learning at scale.

“And the scale goes far beyond having a nice character and presence to interact with.

“Talespin’s latest development tools let you create characters that have almost unlimited scenarios for response, creating an environment that feels like a real person.

“This not only lets companies build content faster, it lets Talespin address more complex use cases: sales training, management training, negotiation, ethical situations, and more.”

Talespin CEO and co-founder Kyle Jackson added: “Talespin’s innovative XR experiences, team, and AI capabilities will further strengthen Cornerstone’s industry-leading learning and talent development solutions to bring even more value to customers.”

Bersin agreed: “With Talespin integrated into Cornerstone’s platform the company can become a leading end-to-end provider in this space.”Bersin agreed: “With Talespin integrated into Cornerstone’s platform the company can become a leading end-to-end provider in this space.”

Cornerstone customers, which include the likes of Samsung, Nestle, Dell and BNP Paribas, can already make use of Talespin’s AI and XR tech.

“Together, we’ll be able to provide customers rich experiences across all modalities that can be customized to their people’s specific needs,” concludes Palsule in his UNLEASH interview.