CodeSignal Inc.the San Francisco-based skills assessment platform trusted by Netflix, Meta and Capital One has launched Cosmo on Wednesday, a mobile learning app that converts free minutes into job-ready skills through artificial intelligence micro-courses.
The app represents a strategic pivot point for CodeSignalwhich built its popularity assessing technical talent for major firms, but all the time had the ambition to revolutionize on-the-job training. Cosmo offers over 300 bite-sized courses on generative AI, coding, marketing, finance, and leadership through an interactive chat interface supported by an AI tutor.
“Cosmo is like having an AI tutor in your pocket who can teach you every thing from GenAI to coding to marketing to finance to leadership, all through practice,” CodeSignal co-founder and CEO Tigran Sloyan said in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “Instead of watching a video or reading something, you begin practicing immediately.”
The launch comes at a time when firms are grappling with massive skills gaps brought on by the rapid adoption of AI. According to the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey76% of developers now use AI tools or plan to, but most employees lack the sensible knowledge to make use of these tools effectively. Traditional corporate training programs, which might cost $20,000 to $40,000 per person for executive-level training, have proven insufficient to scale AI skills across the workforce.
How CodeSignal grew from a technology hiring platform to a number one mobile education company
CodeSignal's journey into mobile learning culminates a decade-long vision that took an unexpected detour into the hiring technology space. Sloyan originally founded the corporate in 2015 with educational ambitions, but quickly realized that alternative education wouldn’t gain traction without competency-based hiring practices.
“I began the corporate with this dream and mission: I would like to assist more people reach their true potential, which in fact leads to raised education,” Sloyan explained in an interview. “But about two years into the corporate's story, I noticed that without knowing it, firms would actually care in regards to the skills you acquire through alternative education – quite than simply asking, 'Where did you study?' or “What did you major in?” – it wouldn’t work.
The company spent the following six years constructing the leading technical reviews platform, processing tens of millions of coding reviews for over 3,000 firms. This hiring-focused phase provided CodeSignal with crucial details about what skills employers actually value – data that now informs Cosmo's curriculum development.
“We know exactly what firms are on the lookout for,” Sloyan said. “Without that, I feel such as you're at the hours of darkness trying to organize people for what's going to assist them get that job, what's going to assist them advance their careers.”
Why AI tutors could finally solve the issue of personalized learning
Cosmo features what CodeSignal calls “practice-first learning,” where users immediately engage with realistic workplace scenarios quite than passively consuming video content. The app's AI tutor, also called Cosmo, guides learners through conversational exchanges that adapt to individual knowledge levels and learning pace.
The platform addresses what educational psychologists call “Bloom's two-sigma problem” — a 1984 study showing that one-on-one instruction produces learning outcomes two standard deviations above those of traditional instruction. For 4 a long time, this remained theoretically interesting but practically unimaginable to scale.
“We know that personalization and tutoring really makes a difference in learning, but it could't be done at scale. How do you discover a tutor for every body?” Sloyan said. “When I saw early versions of generative AI in 2023, I assumed: This is the moment. This technology, especially because it gets higher, might be utilized in unique ways to assist people learn the way in which learning should occur.”
The app combines predetermined course content with real-time personalization. Each lesson follows a structured syllabus, but learners can interrupt with questions that immediately result in AI-generated explanations before returning to the essential content thread.
Training in generative AI skills is taking center stage because the workforce strives to adapt
Nearly a 3rd of Cosmo's introductory content focuses on generative AI applications, reflecting what CodeSignal identifies as essentially the most critical skills gap available in the market today. The app offers role-specific AI training paths for sales professionals, marketers, engineers, healthcare staff, and other disciplines.
“The biggest focus is on generative AI skills as this currently represents the biggest job skills gap for each students and dealing adults,” Sloyan explained. “Everything from how one can understand and use GenAI, how one can take into consideration its limitations, how one can prompt higher, and how one can understand all the landscape.”
This focus addresses a broader workforce transformation driven by the adoption of AI. While some fear job displacement, Sloyan predicts an increased need for expert staff who can work effectively with AI systems.
“I don't think we'll reach a degree where people won't be needed within the workforce. I feel the other will probably be true. We'll need more people because what a single human can do within the age of AI will probably be a lot greater than what we could do before,” he said.
The mobile-first learning strategy is aimed toward each individual staff and company customers
CodeSignal positions Cosmo essentially a consumer application that also serves enterprise customers – a mirrored image of how learning actually happens within the workplace. The company already provides its GenAI Skills Academy for corporate customers, and Cosmo extends this training to mobile devices for on-the-go learning.
“Even though a few of the largest education firms like Coursera and Udemy generate most or no less than half of their revenue from businesses, education is ultimately a consumer business,” Sloyan noted. “Who do you train? You're not training an organization – you're training individuals.”
The app will start free on iOS With premium subscriptions for $24.99 monthly or $149.99 annually that unlock unlimited practice hours and faster progress. Android availability will follow on August twenty eighth.
Enterprise customers who already use CodeSignal's learning platform receive the next: Cosmo Access as a part of their existing subscriptions, creating what the corporate calls a “companion relationship” between desktop-based deep learning and mobile habit formation.
Cosmo faces a crowded EdTech market with a singular give attention to skilled skills
Cosmo enters a crowded education technology market, but targets a largely underserved area of interest: comprehensive skilled training optimized for mobile use. While competitors like Codecademy give attention to specific technical skills and Duolingo dominates language learning, Cosmo's breadth between business and technical disciplines marks a more ambitious area.
Initial feedback from users indicates strong market demand. Beta testers describe the app as “Duolingo for skilled skills” and praise its convenience for mobile learning. CodeSignal's broader learning platform has attracted 1,000,000 users in lower than a yr, with usage doubling every two months.
The app's foundation for posting information provides a competitive advantage over traditional educational publishers. CodeSignal's assessment data reveals which skills actually influence hiring decisions, ensuring curriculum relevance in a rapidly evolving job market.
The corporate training industry struggles with low engagement and poor ROI
The launch of Cosmo reflects broader changes in how firms approach people development. Traditional corporate training often suffers from a scarcity of engagement and retention, with utilization rates often in the one digits despite significant investment.
“The biggest problem with enterprise learning products is retention. Companies are buying, implementing, and their usage is in the one digits, and that's terrible,” Sloyan said. “The way these products ought to be measured is what number of qualified people there are in my organization and the way a lot of them have the talents which can be necessary to me.”
The mobile-first approach takes into consideration how professionals actually eat educational content – briefly sessions while driving, during breaks or other downtime, quite than in dedicated desktop learning blocks.
The skills revolution is accelerating as AI transforms every industry
CodeSignal's expansion into mobile learning comes as the corporate continues to innovate across the competency assessment and development spectrum. Recent product launches include AI-powered coding reviews that evaluate how candidates work with AI tools, and Interviewer agents that automate technical interviews.
Additionally, the corporate has expanded its educational partnerships, including a collaboration with Amazon Web Services Providing free generative AI training to over 30,000 students worldwide through the AWS Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance.
Sloyan places these initiatives inside a broader mission to assist staff address technological disruption. As AI transforms nearly every industry, the power to quickly learn latest skills will turn out to be increasingly necessary to profession resilience.
“We have entered an era of accelerated technological change that may bring with it a variety of disruption,” he said. “A large skills shift is required and without delay I wish more firms would do more to assist individuals find and develop these skills.”
Cosmo's success could determine whether mobile-native, AI-powered learning can finally realize the long-promised potential of personalized education at scale. For CodeSignalThe launch represents a homecoming of sorts – after spending years teaching firms how one can discover expert staff, it’s now teaching staff how one can turn out to be expert staff in the primary place. At a time when artificial intelligence threatens to displace human staff, CodeSignal believes the answer lies in using AI to make people more powerful than ever before.
