Pearson explores credentialing platform to verify AI agents, CTO says

Investing.com -- Pearson is exploring building a platform to verify and credential AI agents themselves, certifying that the systems are fit to do real work inside businesses, Chief Technology Officer Dave Treat told Investing.com.

Treat said the education group wants to extend its assessment heritage, long built around testing people, to a fast-emerging question of whether an AI agent is "ready, safe and fit for purpose" before it is let loose on a company's work.

"We're exploring building a verification framework and credentialling platform to do exactly that," Treat commented. "Assessment has always been at Pearson's core, but AI has expanded the universe of things that need to be assessed."

The comments follow news last week that the company has acquired ITS, a Baltimore-based assessment technology company, in a move to strengthen its assessment and verification capabilities.

The verification framework reflects Treat's wider view that AI is "a significant tailwind" for Pearson rather than a threat.

He argued that as the technology reshapes the labor market, demand for trusted skills validation and credentialing rises with it, and that the company's mix of physical and digital workflows insulates it from the disruption facing purely digital models.

Around 90% of the company's profits, he said, come "from operationally complex physical and digital workflows and print," with the remainder tied to digital courseware embedded in critical workflows.

Pearson shares have at times been caught up in fears that free AI tools could displace paid educational content.

“We are realistic about the disruption AI may create, particularly for some purely digital, direct-to-consumer models. But Pearson’s business is fundamentally different,” stated Treat.

The CTO also detailed how Pearson is using AI to cut costs internally. He explained that AI authoring, editorial and translation tools had reduced content editing times by at least 40%, lowered translation costs by nearly a third and cut content alignment costs by a quarter, while AI-enabled support had reduced the volume of queries handled by human agents by around 40%.

Those gains, he added, are “delivering meaningful operational efficiencies, contributing to margin improvements over the medium-term.”

On revenue, Treat pointed to a run of commercial agreements underpinning growth.

"Over the past two years, we have signed a number of multi-year agreements with leading technology companies that span certifications, joint go-to-market offerings, and strategic partnerships," said Treat. "Together, these agreements lock in revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars with existing customers and add incremental, cumulative revenue commitments to Pearson through to 2030."

Inclusive Access grew 20% in the first half of 2026 and now accounts for 50% of Pearson's U.S. core courseware business.

Treat added that the company is also rethinking how it tests, moving toward what he called "ambient assessment, where you're demonstrating mastery continuously through the learning experience itself, rather than just a high-pressure, high-stakes moment at the end."

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