Insider Brief
- Acorn has raised $12.3 million in Series A funding led by Level Equity to expand globally, enhance its AI-powered performance and learning platform, and grow strategic partnerships.
- The company launched Capabilities AI, a tool that instantly maps job roles to capability frameworks and generates personalized career development plans, addressing widespread dissatisfaction with traditional HR systems.
- Acorn’s PLMS (Performance Learning Management System) integrates learning and performance management, aiming to close skills gaps and improve employee engagement by aligning development with measurable business outcomes.
PRESS RELEASE — Acorn, the AI-powered performance and learning management platform, has announced its $12.3 million USD Series A funding round led by Level Equity. This investment will accelerate Acorn’s geographic expansion, enhance product development and grow strategic partnerships. The company also launched Capabilities AI, new software that automatically maps capabilities frameworks to job descriptions and creates personalized career development plans in minutes rather than months.
“Acorn is bridging the gap between learning and performance with an AI-native solution that’s both timely and differentiated,” said Charles Chen, Partner at Level Equity. “In a market saturated with many legacy technologies, Acorn’s focus on business-specific capabilities over generic skills gives organizations a clear path to measuring and driving employee impact. We’re proud to back the Acorn team as they scale a category-defining platform transforming workplace performance.”
Disconnected Tools and Disengaged Talent
The “2025 Corporate Performance and Learning Survey” reveals a workforce at odds with traditional HR systems:
- Only 29% of employees are “very satisfied” with how their company evaluates performance.
- One in four employees question their value to their organization after performance reviews.
- Nearly 80% of senior leaders admit employees must leave to advance their careers.
Further compounding these issues, 44% of respondents question the fairness of the current metrics used to measure employee competency. They also noted the lack of integration with performance management tools and of a centralized system to manage competencies as top barriers to the success of their program. This disconnect between learning and performance platforms contributes to low engagement and ineffective development programs.
Capabilities AI: A New Approach to Corporate Learning
Acorn Capabilities AI redefines corporate learning by identifying the core capabilities required for success in each role and automatically generating employee development plans that are aligned with business strategy. The platform provides a common language for learning, recruitment and career mobility, enabling organizations to build customized capability frameworks in just minutes.
“Corporate learning has been broken for a long time now,” said Blake Proberts, CEO and Founder of Acorn. “Most organizations still aren’t showing people what they need to do in their roles. By using AI to build capability frameworks and map learning content to those capabilities within Acorn, development becomes relevant, timely, and useful. It’s how we move past tickbox training with low engagement to learning that truly drives performance.”
Pioneering Performance Learning Management Systems (PLMS)
Seeing the need to unify performance and learning, Acorn launched the PLMS category in 2023. This unified approach addresses the limitations of traditional Learning Management Systems (LMS) by mapping role-specific capabilities to measurable outcomes.
“The HR landscape is shifting. Organizations are seeking solutions to integrate eLearning and performance management,” said Grace Savides, Senior Market Research Analyst at G2. “More companies are aligning their L&D and performance initiatives to respond effectively to the ever-growing skills gap and demands for faster growth.”
Additional Resources
- Explore Capabilities AI: Acorn Capabilities AI
- Sign up for a demo of Acorn’s capability-driven performance and learning management system
- Download the full “2025 Corporate Performance and Learning Survey: Current Practices and Employee Sentiment” report
- Check out the research report on “The State of L&D, Organizational Effectiveness and Performance Management”
- Learn more about PLMS
- Follow Acorn on LinkedIn
About Acorn
Acorn PLMS (Performance Learning Management System) is the AI-powered performance and learning management platform. With a proprietary library of over 1,600 capabilities and 4,800 proficiency levels, Acorn helps organizations define the capabilities that matter, map them to roles and learning content, and build personalized development plans. By showing learners how to succeed in their roles and enabling leaders to have meaningful performance conversations, Acorn empowers L&D, HR, and people leaders to create clear career pathways and prove the business impact of learning.
About Level Equity
Level Equity is a lower middle market private investment firm focused on providing capital to rapidly growing software and technology-enabled businesses. Level provides long-term capital across various transaction types in support of continued growth. The firm has raised over $4.5 billion in committed capital for their closed funds and co-investments, and has made over 125 investments since its inception.
Contacts
Media Contact
Quincy Standa
Bhava Communications for Acorn
[email protected]
