Coursera at KeyBanc Forum: Strategic Growth and AI Focus

On Monday, 11 August 2025, Coursera (NYSE:COUR) participated in the KeyBanc Capital Markets Technology Leadership Forum, where CFO Ken discussed the company’s strategic direction and financial performance. Despite past challenges in consumer and enterprise segments, Coursera is seeing a rebound driven by AI innovations and product enhancements. The company raised its full-year revenue and EBITDA guidance, signaling confidence in its growth trajectory.

Key Takeaways

• Coursera reported strong Q2 results with double-digit growth, particularly in the consumer segment.
• AI is a major driver, increasing course enrollments and enabling product enhancements.
• The company raised its full-year revenue guidance by $17 million and improved its EBITDA outlook.
• Enterprise segment faces challenges, but the campus segment shows strong demand.
• New CEO Greg Hart is focusing on operational improvements and AI-driven product development.

Financial Results

• Coursera reported strong Q2 results, with significant growth in the consumer business.
• Full-year revenue guidance was increased by $17 million, reflecting confidence in strategic priorities.
• EBITDA guidance was also raised, indicating improved operational efficiencies.
• The consumer business saw improvements in conversion rates, boosting top-line results.
• Despite a projected deceleration in the second half, traditional consumer products are expected to maintain double-digit growth.

Operational Updates

• The consumer business returned to double-digit growth, with a focus on conversion, retention, and ARPU.
• Coursera Plus subscriptions are performing well, enhancing revenue visibility and cash flow.
• The enterprise segment has slowed due to economic uncertainty, but reskilling and upskilling demand is expected to rise.
• The campus segment is thriving, offering accredited courses with strong demand in North America and Asia Pacific.

Future Outlook

• Coursera plans to enhance retention in the consumer business to drive further growth.
• The enterprise business is expected to gain momentum as the need for AI-related reskilling increases.
• The company aims to improve its operating model annually, focusing on revenue growth and platform enhancements.
• AI and platform improvements are expected to create more value with existing content.

Q&A Highlights

• Approximately 30% of enterprise leads originate from former students, showcasing synergy between consumer and enterprise segments.
• Coursera is transitioning from a marketplace to a platform model, enhancing content value from partners.
• Certification remains a key value proposition for learners and corporate customers.

Coursera’s strategic focus on AI and product innovation positions it for continued growth. For more details, please refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - KeyBanc Capital Markets Technology Leadership Forum:

Devin: Corso, our CFO joining us today for a twenty five minute fireside chat. Ken, welcome welcome back,

Ken, CFO, Coursera: I guess. Thank you, Devin.

Devin: Yeah. Yeah. Good to have you in our new venue. Hope you like that. Maybe, you know, since we’ve last seen each other in our conference, it’s been a while, maybe it’s a good place to start is kind of recap what has happened in the past few years.

I know Coursera as well as the market that it is in has changed quite meaningfully. Maybe to start off kind of recapping how the business has progressed in the past couple of years, of lay out the industry tailwinds they continue to see but also some of the headwinds that might have emerged from the industry?

Ken, CFO, Coursera: Sure. So overview last couple of years briefly if you can. Yeah, not blow by blow.

Devin: Maybe just high level.

Ken, CFO, Coursera: Okay. High level. So high level, we have two today primary segments, a consumer segment and an enterprise segment. Over the last couple of years, the consumer segment, beginning a couple of years back, had some headwinds. We had some operational, some executional issues I think.

And growth slowed and had been had done pretty well growth over time going back to our IPO which was March 2021. That last year was a slowing, which was fairly painful for us. The enterprise business as well had begun to slow down a little bit broadly across enterprise spend. I don’t think anything for us specifically could see others as well with just less certainty more recently in the markets around capital spend. And so we had a slowing of both segments at the same time over similar times.

We’ve rebounded a fair amount over the last couple of quarters. We welcomed our new CEO, Greg Hart, February, so six months and a few days. During that period we focused pretty hard a lot of operational things specifically as it relates to consumer. There are some quick wins there, some additional focus on the key metrics and the things that matter which for a consumer business at the highest level is top of funnel conversion, retention and ARPU. And so it sounds pretty basic but we’re now very focused around all our initiatives aimed directly at improving one of those metrics and have had some pretty good initial results.

We returned to double digit growth this last quarter. I think people are excited so it’s an interesting time. We’ve had a lot of investors stop by who haven’t seen in a while so you’re I’ve talked with a couple of people about the last couple of years today so it’s been fairly interesting. And I think we’re at a very interesting time period with AI both as it affects interest in our products, which we can talk a little bit more about, but as well our ability to deliver and deliver learning for all of our customers both consumer and enterprise.

Devin: That’s a good recap. Super helpful. Maybe I’ll dive into deeper into all these topics you kind of talked about then maybe just start us off on AI. I mean that’s a big topic at the And nowadays, I know you guys have focused a lot around AI content lately. I think that was also 100 and the initiatives of the Deduce CEO, Greg Hart.

Yeah. Maybe kind of just talk about what are you guys seeing in terms of the AI related courses on the platform kind of talk about also touch on some of the professional certificates that you guys have seen continuous strong demand. Maybe just start there for the content side of things.

Ken, CFO, Coursera: Sure. So on the content side, yes, exactly right. No surprise. People have been focused on AI and learning more about AI. We’ve gone from eight enrollments per minute for AI related courses to 12 over the past year.

So a lot more interest on the consumer side, a lot more consumption of AI. We’re also pairing that with product with both from a teaching assistant standpoint as well as from a language translation standpoint. So it’s affected our product as well. You’d imagine where we’ve done more translation, 5,000 courses in 26 languages over the course of this past year. We’ve had significant uptick in revenue for those courses actually as they’re being adopted worldwide.

So we’re seeing benefit both from subject matter standpoint and the demand standpoint as well as our ability to enhance our offerings.

Devin: Okay and then maybe just touch on the professional certificates a little bit. Sure. You have seen really good demand. Maybe you can’t lay out the near term roadmap for that. Could you guys expand to more subject areas, getting more partners into the ecosystem?

Ken, CFO, Coursera: Yeah. So we’re continuing it’s a great question. We’re continuing to focus and there’s kind of the entry level search which is something that’s been very successful for Coursera historically. But what’s interesting, and I think it’s AI related, is what we’re seeing is more people reskilling, more mid level job job functions essentially, looking to study more around AI as opposed to entry level. So which I don’t think is surprising for people reading tea leaves and what’s going to happen with corporate America and downsizing.

People are talking about it actively. So actually one of the big shifts is a shift. It’s really more an increment to more people mid career picking up and taking courses as opposed to pure entry level. So but we continue to source. We continue to source in health care and it’s early from an AI demand.

I think we’re going to see tailwinds both across consumer and corporate and our sense is it’s early right now. Okay. And then I kind

Devin: of wanted to switch gear, maybe last topic on consumer. Know you guys have been increasing your focus on pushing the adoption of subscription offering within consumer. Maybe talk a little bit about that, what you

Ken, CFO, Coursera: guys are doing over there to drive the adoption up and what’s kind the recurring revenue mix within subscription as well with the consumer? Yes. So we haven’t described specifics on the Coloradans subscription but to say it’s doing very, very well. This has been a focus for us for a couple of years now, really a pricing bundling set of decisions we made a couple of years back. We’ve had there will probably be some more to come in our discussions on next quarters with some of the actual results.

But the a very, very strong pickup in subscriptions which is giving us better visibility and confidence around subscription. And that Coursera Plus subscription offering we have is both on a month to month basis and an annual basis. So one of the things we’ve seen lately is we’ve been selling a lot of the annual subscription which is great as it relates to cash flow and deferred revenue and again a lot more visibility in the consumer top line. But it’s also given us focus as we look around the metrics around consumer and as we look to improve, we’ve improved conversion a fair amount which is what you’ve seen in the results with the uptick. We’ve seen retention hold flat and we’re optimistic that as we do more on the product side we’re going to start to move that.

So I do see that as a very large lever of growth as we go into next year. It just takes a little bit longer because it’s product based And so we’ve been very excited about the progress on Coursera Plus. It’s been a big highlight for Coursera.

Devin: Okay. That’s good to hear. And then maybe switching to enterprise, maybe starting off of the from the consumer for business segment. Could you just give like a brief update on what you’re seeing there? I know maybe corporate L and D budget could still be tight.

Maybe just kind describe the environment that you’re seeing from a budget standpoint?

Ken, CFO, Coursera: Sure. So there’s it’s been a bit of a slowdown on the enterprise side we’ve seen across the industry. I’m not sure necessarily that makes sense over time. I think maybe we should be performing better and we’re making some steps we’ve taken some steps to do that. But there’s broadly speaking around enterprise with some more uncertainty in the economy.

We’ve seen that. You guys see more than I do. But on the SaaS side, on the pure software side we’ve seen slowdowns in corporate spending and we’ve seen the same thing in something a little bit less mission critical on the training side. But again to me it’s a little bit more of an anomaly. We believe there’s going to be greater pick up.

The requirement to rescale workforces as AI hits full stride is only increasing. So we believe with some of what we’re doing to execute better, which is going to be the key for us, you’re going to hear us talking more about that over the course of the next year, I expect an opportunity for us to do better there.

Devin: Okay. No, that’s a good question because I mean you mentioned more reskilling and upskilling needed but I guess there’s a whole dynamics of kind of AI kind of coming after a lot of the more entry level jobs, right? Yeah. Can you maybe just kind of speak to that dynamics a little bit? Are you still seeing kind of the drag from maybe some of your enterprise customers still seeing down sell within the base or are you seeing actually some benefits of enterprises kind of want to use Coursera more so to reskill the employees at this point?

Ken, CFO, Coursera: On the C4B side, where we’re seeing traction is people interested in reskilling for AI. Have we seen a lot of downsizing with I don’t think we’ve seen drops in payroll that significant yet that it’s material to us. And again, I’d hope that that’s far outweighed by the skilling and reskilling. It’s just for a lot of companies it’s the question everybody is asking is how does AI affect my industry and the companies I’m invested in? And I think more people are looking for upside there which is about for the people you keep training them so that you can strategically advance your business.

So it hasn’t shown in our results and again we need to execute better is my opinion but the but in the near term I don’t think that’s a concern.

Devin: Okay. And then maybe yeah. Okay. And maybe switching to campus segment, I think that’s like the one that you guys are seeing or calling it a bright spot within enterprise. Maybe for the investors who aren’t too familiar with what you guys are offering on the campus segment, could you just kind of just recap on what you guys do there?

What do you guys offer?

Ken, CFO, Coursera: Yeah, sure. And not to cherry pick, it’s a smaller part to be very clear of the enterprise business. But it is going very, very well. It’s exciting. So it’s the same product that’s being sold on the corporate side that’s being sold to universities for their students.

And what’s unique about our offering for them is a lot of our courses are accredited. And so they can offer this to their students which the students like because they tend to be industry relevant. So you’re getting your degree and you get to take courses from any of the big industry players, you know, that we do business with. I don’t want to name any individually to not exclude the other But all the big industry names, the students really like that. And so and then from a university standpoint, they’re able to offer at lower cost credited content.

And so it’s we’ve done particularly well there. We’ve done well in North America and we’ve done particularly well in Asia Pac. And we, because of our approach and because and because the historic degrees product, we it’s part of the consumer business today. But because of our entries there, we have these assets, like these accreditations, that are very useful. So we compete somewhat uniquely Yeah.

In that space and there’s very strong demand with all the pressure the universities are coming under now financially. And so it’s been a particular sweet spot. Again, not to overemphasize it because it’s relatively small in the big scheme of things, but it’s a great product and it’s great for the universities themselves and for the students. I think it’s also helpful from a branding standpoint for us to have prominent role on campus like that.

Devin: Yeah it sounds like it’s a really unique offering that maybe only Coursera can provide. I mean do you guys Pretty much. Any competitors in that segment at all? We do not. We do not.

Okay. Yeah. I mean it seems like what you guys have on

JC: the platform You guys are probably the best position to do that Yeah.

Devin: In that segment. That’s good to hear. I just wanna pause here. Jeremy,

Ken, CFO, Coursera: do have

Devin: a question? With college students learning through Coursera and then moving on to an enterprise, continuing that path?

Ken, CFO, Coursera: Yeah. It’s a good question. And the question for anybody listening in is are there synergies between students picking up Coursera and then sales on the enterprise side? And it’s a great question. I don’t know the current stats, but a lot of what we do is IT oriented.

And the stats I do remember we were talking on the road show around the IPO and thereafter. And we talked about the kind of synergy we get between the different product lines. And at the time it was roughly 30% of enterprise leads came from former students because we have this huge 183,000,000, and some people might say it’s a vanity metric, But people who’ve ever subscribed to Coursera and it’s interesting because it’s indicative of branding recognition. So it’s true. It’s a useful number.

And I remember when I was first becoming familiar with the company as we were getting ready to go public And I saw that number, that 30%. I thought I need to go poke at that and test that because that can’t be real. That’s too big a number. And then of course what you find is so much of what we do is IT and engineering oriented that it makes a lot of sense as people progress in their careers even from the university side, but even as they progress moving forward from the managerial standpoint, they go to us because that’s what they’re familiar with and they like the courses and it’s super high quality training. So it’s a great question, something I haven’t thought about in a little while.

Devin: Yes. Thank you for the question. Just want to maybe since we have you here, Ken, want to hit on some financial questions. I know you guys reported second quarter not too long ago, really strong results. You guys saw growth accelerating.

You guys raising your full year guide and EBITDA guide as well. If you could just kind of help us parse out the strength that you saw in the quarter, how much of that was maybe from some of

JC: the benefits you guys saw from the strategic priorities you guys

Devin: have made? Could you guys is it possible to parse out some of the benefits?

Ken, CFO, Coursera: I can talk about it broadly, absolutely. And the answer is the vast majority of it came which is surprisingly fast performance. But again, when you’re looking at some of the fundamentals like on the consumer business, the consumer business, the model reacts very quickly when you have improvement. So increased conversion shows in top line on consumer very fast. And so we were really pleased with the progress we’ve made there over the last couple of quarters and I think we’re getting some immediate payback there.

There’s other things that we’re doing and I mentioned it before, but on the retention side, which I think we haven’t yet seen the benefit of or it’s certainly not fully, and things that we’re excited about going forward for the next couple of quarters. To your point, it was a beat and raise quarter, which felt good to be able to deliver. We increased our revenue guidance for the year by $17,000,000 which is pretty solid to say the least. And in those numbers we’ve had a lot of people ask and we talked about it a little bit on the call. What we’ve built into that fairly significant raise was our visibility on the progress we’ve made around these various strategic priorities as as you asked.

We’ve built in what we can see. We haven’t built in the things we expect to do and expect to benefit from. We could do that, that would not be unreasonable but we’d like to have a succession of quarters where we’re improving our outlook which is certainly our objective. Yes. So I

Devin: mean if I look at the second half guide, it is implying a bit of a decel. But just given all the momentum you’ve seen, is it fair to say that you guys could maybe accelerate in the second half? Or how should we think about the momentum you’re seeing versus the decel you’re kind of expecting in the second

Ken, CFO, Coursera: So it wouldn’t shock me. The methodology we use to do the forecast besides I just described. So hopefully we’re doing a good job on the other things we’re pursuing that we haven’t baked in and we’ll enjoy the benefit of some of that from a growth standpoint. One of the other things that we discussed on the call because of course it was Q3, so it’s a Q3 guidance for annual, which means you’re giving Q4 guidance, is it implied a deceleration. Again, we talked about this on the call, but implied a deceleration in q four on the consumer side.

We highlighted at the time that about 200 basis points of that is related to the degrees product within consumer, which we collapsed into that segment at the beginning of the year and at that time made the statement that we saw that shrinking a bit over the course of the year. That is that being realized which we had visibility to. But the traditional consumer products including subscription, which again which we’ve been particularly pleased with, remain on track around this double digit growth as we go into looking at next year. So no, I wouldn’t be surprised. One of the other things, and you’d asked before on EBITDA and I forgot to mention, we did increase our EBITDA guidance, which isn’t typically what we like to do during the course of the year.

Our methodology, which I like to remind people of all the time, is we pick an annual EBITDA margin target at the beginning of the year, and we try to spend that where the revenue is better or worse than that over course of the year. We’ve reduced our workforce size to make that meet when things have been on the downside. And on the upside, we’ll invest more in growth opportunities. The reason for this is philosophically we believe we’re a growth company. It’s a large market in front of it while until we just revised recently or revisited recently our growth.

While we slowed down, the objective was still to move, you know, more quickly towards growing again. We did raise that EBITDA guidance because we were scaling faster with the improvement in the top line and we couldn’t spend it fast enough. We won’t throw away money of course. One of the things we’ve done since we’ve been public a few years and it’s what we said we’d do at the beginning is we’ve improved the operating model every single year and that’s always our objective. And so but we we we aren’t emphasizing the EBITDA.

We’re I think we’re showing plenty of scaling and it’s it’s resurrecting growth and having strong double digit growth that we’re focused on right now. Yes. Okay. But a nice win on the EBITDA side too.

Devin: Yes, for sure. Do you mind like kind of diving deeper into some of the efficiencies that you’ve been seeing from the model? I know you’ve talked about, I mean, you’re seeing higher LTV from some of your consumer products, and I think you’ve kind of done something up in the enterprise segment. Could you speak to that a little bit on

Ken, CFO, Coursera: Yeah. So we are seeing higher LTV if if you again, if you improve any of those metrics we talked about on the consumer side, it increases LTV, which is great because you can invest. It’s a consumer Internet model, so you can increase your marketing investment and still have it be a good use of money. So it’s this kind of virtuous circle when you’re getting more value and the consumer is getting more value for what you’re offering, which is what we’re doing. And we expect that trend to continue with what we’re starting to deliver on the product side.

So we’re seeing it there, certainly. We’ve seen some improvement in gross margin over the course of the past year. That’s been with some of the content initiatives we’ve launched, more of our internally developed content, the ability to refresh content using AI more effectively, and some partnership agreements with industry partners who are more interested in promoting their platforms than they are in education revenue and so we get better revenue shares there. So it’s something we’ve seen structurally that’s helped on the gross margin side. And then just delivering more top line, you’re seeing scaling.

There’s not a lot of additional investments we’ve had to make on the operating expenses while we’re beating on the top line so the gross margin is slowing down to additional EBITDA which then forced us to have to raise our EBITDA guide this year, as we seek more growth.

Devin: Okay, and then maybe, question, J. C?

JC: So you’re investing a little bit in your own

Ken, CFO, Coursera: product? Yes.

JC: Are you evolving from this marketplace that exists today to more kind of a platform approach? And does that change your relationship with the universities and other product kind of content creators? And then do you also have the infrastructure internally to do this on a global scale?

Ken, CFO, Coursera: Yeah. It’s a great question. And it’s if what we’re seeing as we make the changes that we are, are we moving away from university partners to more of a platform type model? And then do we have the ability to scale that globally? And so it’s a very good question.

The platform the content is always incredibly valuable. And a lot of what we deliver, it’s it’s not just the content and the learnings, but also the value of the certificate to prove that people have certain skills. And the brands associated with that are extraordinarily important, both as it relates to our university partners as well as our industry partners. And the industry partners have accelerated and done particularly well over the last couple of years. But both are very important in that indication, that certificate, is an important part of the delivery.

So all of them, both the traditional university as well as the industry partners, remain incredibly important. What we’re doing is through those courses is we’re enhancing that value with what we’re doing on Coursera Coach as an example, which is the AI assisted, and then adding things like the language translation, doing things we can do from a platform perspective that makes no sense for the content developers to do. So so they remain extraordinarily important, and the brands are super important and the expertise they have. At the same time, we’re enhancing the value of that content through what we offer, which is producing more value for our customers, which is both our learners on the consumer side and for our corporate users as well. And then from a global perspective, there’s always more scaling we can do internationally, but a lot of this is product driven.

And we’ve had more of an emphasis in product, I would say, since Greg has come on board over the last six months. I expect that to continue. We talk a lot internally. One of the significant changes we’ve made managerially is focus on focusing on capabilities. Everything rolls under these capabilities which are more longer term platform like investments and skills through which we derive these values we’re talking about.

And, you know, one of the first things, the first big search we launched when we started was a new head of product. I think we launched that two weeks after Greg came on board, not because he came up within two weeks because he was thinking about it before he started. He comes from his deep background, of course, at Amazon and a very, you know, product growth or product focused growth initiatives and we’re seeing benefit there already which is surprisingly fast and we’re going to see a lot more to come. So I think that’s what we’re going see. I think that will translate worldwide and it already is around some of the things like translation, as I said before.

I’d expect to see more of it. So we’ll continue to invest there, but it’s not something that’s unique to the global footprint that we have. It’s a great question

Devin: though. You for that. Yeah. And then maybe just one final question for you, Ken. Yeah.

What’s like the most appreciated part of the story that you see for Coursera that you think, you know, investors cannot see or are missing?

Ken, CFO, Coursera: I think the what’s to come on the product side as it relates to AI, our ability to change, well, to leverage its content as I was just discussing, the ability for learners and corporate customers to get more out of what we’re doing and increasing the value they get which we will share in. So I do think we’re about to start a period of time where we are creating more value with the same content that we have, which ultimately will drive revenue in the most meaningful fashion it can in in value delivery to our customers and how we share in that. Great.

Devin: I think that’s a good note to end on. Ken, really appreciate the conversation and time, and thanks for everyone for joining

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