NEW YORK: Acorn, a skills and development platform, has acquired B Online Learning, Australia and New Zealand’s leading eLearning design and development provider, the company announced.
The acquisition comes as new research highlights a growing disconnect between how organizations measure learning and what they actually need to know about workforce capabilities.
The 2026 State of Learning for AI Fluency Report found that 77% of organizations still treat course completion as proof that skills exist. Meanwhile, Mercer research shows that 79% of executives identify better insight into their people’s capabilities as essential for outsized business performance.
“Organizations aren’t struggling to find content. They are struggling to show that content is building the capabilities their workforce needs,” said Blake Proberts, CEO and co-founder of Acorn. “Acorn treats the development plan as the engine: career goal to skills gap to learning action to proof of capability.”
B Online Learning brings two decades of experience building custom eLearning for government, regulated industries and enterprise organizations across health, energy and agriculture in Australia and New Zealand.
The company delivers learning through its Birch Learning Platform and has been the exclusive Articulate Certified Training Partner for the region since 2012, having trained more than 10,000 learning designers and L&D administrators.
The combination gives organizations the ability to build learning mapped to specific roles, measured against real skill needs and proven by what employees can demonstrate. Acorn’s skills framework includes more than 1,600 capabilities and 4,800 proficiency levels.
“For 20 years, B Online Learning has designed eLearning content, trained Australia and New Zealand’s L&D teams to build it themselves, and delivered learning solutions for some of the region’s most respected organizations,” said Beck Verity, co-founder of B Online Learning. “Acorn shares our belief in giving teams what they need to do the work themselves. Together we can offer customers the full stack: the training, the tools, and the platform to deliver learning that shows up in what people can actually do.”
The acquisition follows Acorn’s expansion into global markets and strengthens the platform’s position for HR leaders, talent management teams and L&D administrators where workforce readiness is a measurable business outcome. Acorn holds a top-trending ranking in G2’s Skills Management category.
Acorn is a skills and development platform that maps skills to roles and learning content, making development visible and capturing evidence of workforce readiness. Powered by a framework of more than 1,600 capabilities and 4,800 proficiency levels, Acorn serves customers across HR, talent management, L&D, government, customer education and non-profit segments globally.
Founded in 2006, B Online Learning is Australia’s leading provider of eLearning design and development and the exclusive Certified Articulate Training Partner for Australia and New Zealand since 2012. The company offers expertise in instructional design, animation, illustration, video production and AI-powered learning solutions.
