Pluralsight to Acquire A Cloud Guru to Accelerate Solving the Single Biggest Challenge in IT Today: The Growing Cloud Skills Gap

Combination provides the deepest and most effective hands-on learning solutions to drive cloud certifications and business cloud maturity

Silicon Slopes, Utah – June 2, 2021 — Pluralsight, Inc., the technology workforce development company, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire A Cloud Guru (ACG), a leading cloud skills development platform. The acquisition is expected to close later this year, subject to customary closing conditions and follows Vista Equity Partners’ recent acquisition of Pluralsight.

“Technology is the number one differentiator for all businesses and the technology skills of your team is what determines success or failure. Nowhere is that more apparent than with cloud technologies,” said Aaron Skonnard, Co-founder and CEO of Pluralsight. “To meet the needs of our customers and best support their cloud transformations, we are determined to deliver the most comprehensive solution for driving cloud maturity at scale. With the acquisition of A Cloud Guru, we can now provide an all-in-one solution to accelerate the cloud skill development journey for large enterprise customers and individual learners.”

Cloud computing continues to experience massive growth for large enterprises around the world, increasing the need for cloud skill development to keep pace. In fact, research shows that the vast majority of IT decision makers believe that the shortage of cloud skills is their number one challenge. By combining the power of A Cloud Guru’s leading certification courses, hands-on labs and sandboxes, exams and quizzes with the existing library of Pluralsight Skills cloud courses and hands-on learning experiences, the joint organization will now be better positioned to meet the market demand for cloud skill development.

“ACG and Pluralsight were founded to solve the same problem—closing the technology skills gap by democratizing access to technical education. Within our shared missions, we’ve taken different but complementary approaches. Both approaches have proven to resonate strongly with customers who want depth and breadth in tech education,” Sam Kroonenburg, Co-founder and CEO, A Cloud Guru. “I am excited by the next phase of our mission in which, together, we will build the next-generation platform for hands-on learning across all of technology.”

William Blair & Company, LLC acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Pluralsight and Vista in the transaction, with Kirkland & Ellis LLP serving as legal counsel. J.P. Morgan Securities LLC served as the exclusive financial advisor to A Cloud Guru and Latham & Watkins LLP served as legal counsel.

About Pluralsight

Pluralsight is the leading technology workforce development company that helps companies and teams build better products by developing critical skills, improving processes and gaining insights through data, and providing strategic skills consulting. Trusted by forward-thinking companies of every size in every industry, Pluralsight helps individuals and businesses transform with technology. Pluralsight Skills helps enterprises build technology skills at scale with expert-authored courses on today’s most important technologies, including cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning, data science, and security, among others. Skills also includes tools to align skill development with business objectives, virtual instructor-led training, hands-on labs, skill assessments and one-of-a-kind analytics. Flow complements Skills by providing engineering teams with actionable data and visibility into workflow patterns to accelerate the delivery of products and services. For more information about Pluralsight visit pluralsight.com.

About A Cloud Guru 

A Cloud Guru is driven by a simple mission — to teach the world to cloud. We believe people learn best by doing. That’s why our in-house cloud experts go to ridiculous lengths to design fresh, engaging, and hands-on learning tools that empower both individuals and organizations to stay ahead of the technology curve. As the world’s most comprehensive, hands-on, and effective SaaS platform for cloud learning, ACG has enabled 2.5 million learners and over 4,500 organizations to achieve a brighter future. For more information about ACG visit acloudguru.com.