London-based startup AcademyAI has secured £1.65 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round led by Nexus Family Office and Panthera Family Office. The company is building a platform that evaluates how effectively employees use artificial intelligence tools and then delivers training tailored to individual roles. The investment will support development of this offering as organisations continue to adopt AI at pace.
Addressing a workforce measurement gap
Many companies have given employees access to tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, yet few can determine whether staff can use them productively. AcademyAI was co-founded by Alex Packham, Andy Lambert, Michael Walton and Rob Barnett to tackle this measurement problem. The platform focuses on closing the distance between AI tool procurement and meaningful business outcomes.
A six-axis assessment framework
AcademyAI evaluates employees through a six-axis AI capability framework developed with methodology grounded in the Alan Turing Institute's approach. The framework assesses critical thinking, judgement, prompting ability, evaluation of AI-generated outputs and practical AI skills. After identifying specific capability gaps, the system provides personalised training and use cases aligned with each employee's actual responsibilities.
Short, contextual training modules
Instead of relying on lengthy webinars or generic AI literacy programmes, AcademyAI delivers applied learning through five-minute modules. These modules are tailored to an organisation's internal tools, terminology and operational context. The platform also uses underlying AI models to generate and continuously update training content as AI tools and practices evolve.
Dashboards for leadership
For managers and leadership teams, AcademyAI provides dashboards that track AI capability development across individual employees, teams and departments. This gives organisations a clear view of where skills are improving and where further targeted training may be required. The result is a measurable, trackable approach to workforce AI capability rather than an assumed outcome of tool access.
Research supports the skills gap
Independent research highlights the scale of the challenge AcademyAI is addressing. Notion's 2026 Global AI Transformation Study found that 88 percent of organisations remain at the earliest stages of AI adoption, and 55 percent of AI decision makers believe investment is outpacing employee learning. PwC's 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer also reported that skills for the most AI-exposed jobs are changing more than twice as fast as those for less exposed roles.
A founder's perspective
Alex Packham, co-founder of AcademyAI, said that nearly every chief executive and company leader has provided employees with AI tools, but almost none know whether their people can use them properly. He described this as a measurement problem first, preventing leaders from closing the gap between buying a tool and gaining value from it. AcademyAI was created to close that distance between AI adoption and AI outcomes.
Positioning and future plans
AcademyAI is not an Ofsted-regulated training provider and does not use the UK Apprenticeship Levy funding mechanism. The company instead positions its Turing Institute-grounded assessment framework and certification as evidence of workforce AI capability for leadership, auditors and clients. The new funding will be used to further develop the platform and expand its offering as organisations scale AI adoption.
AcademyAI's emergence reflects a maturing phase in enterprise AI adoption, as attention shifts from acquiring tools to ensuring employees can extract genuine value from them. The startup's focus on measurement, role-specific training and leadership visibility addresses a widely recognised barrier to real business outcomes. By using AI to generate and update training content, the company is also betting that the technology creating the skills gap can help close it in a structured and relevant way.