Announcement: Udemy Acquires Lummi.ai!Announced

Sounds awesome, thanks!

Yay!🎉

Es genial,

Muchas gracias

EXCELLENT!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi @GenefaMurph976 ,

Congratulations on the Lummi acquisition. I genuinely hope this turns into something meaningful for the platform and I truly want Udemy to succeed.

Udemy must believe that instructors are struggling to create engaging visual content. Was there a wave of feedback in the forums demanding new design tools?

Most of us are already using other free and paid platforms for years. Creating visually engaging content has never been easier. So I’m confused. Are you planning to move all course editing into one place or is it just for creating visuals?

Udemy acquires Lummi and offers it free for six months, then plans to charge for it. All of this happens while instructors are already grappling with a revenue share cut in 2026. I can't see a way to feel excited about this yet, especially about the paying… for something we didn’t ask for?

Here’s what instructors have been consistently asking for:

• Better analytics
• Real student interaction tools
• More robust engagement features
• A more intuitive curriculum and upload experience
• Easier access to our own UB learners

Lummi doesn’t address these, does it? It doesn’t solve my pain points, or those of any instructors I know. I must be missing something fundamental.

I’ve been working hard to grow my revenue on Udemy, and I was proud to double it. But with the revenue share changes looming in January 2026, it feels like those efforts are about to be undone and I don’t see the necessary tools being introduced that help us win too. Roleplay is a great future and I am sure in time, it'll be even better.

Thinking about how many hours of instructor calls, meetings, and feedback sessions are seemingly set aside... I want Udemy to thrive. I want to believe in a sustainable future where both the platform and instructors win not just for six months or a year, but in a way we can trust long-term.

I’m just reaching out, once again, hoping our concerns can truly be heard.

Hi guys/Udemy team,

I agree with @EvrimKanbur - I would like it to be a successful move, but I'm a bit confused as well about the purpose of Lummi within the Udemy Universe…so, I would like to catch up with you and better understand the new Udemy vision.

Can you be more specific on what exactly that means for us (instructors) – meaning how do you expect us to apply it?

• For example, “image-to-video” sounds great for short content. Yet, imagine doing it for a 4-hour-long content like an entire course!? Not practical at all.
• Or, a background removal or images – nice, but we can find those elsewhere, meaning – it’s not a game changer.

So, I believe there is more to come…

For example, a month ago, you released a Role-Play tool, and I think it’s amazing….a game changer. Yet, the adoption was slow, and many instructors started being negative because not being able to quickly figure it out. Now, a more positive vibe is emerging, and that can be slowly sensed.

Let’s not repeat the same mistake here. Give us a background story to better understand how to apply it from day 1. Is it primarily intended to level up our existing courses (so we have to work backwards by redesigning the existing materials), or did you envision it will dominantly be used for the upcoming innovations (e.g., Labs, blending it with the Role Plays, etc.) – so you needed the tech?

Can you share more insights about “revamping the Instructor Academy”? I understand that interactive content is the future, but I’m not a tech guy to capture the “how-to” elements with just a few words.

Sorry for the dumb request/questions. Please, share with us your new vision with more details – obviously, it’s a big deal for all of us (I think this is the first M&A deal ever done by Udemy).

Regards, and thanks in advance,

Boris

@GenefaMurph976 I would better need Text to Speech application. Many of students always complain about my accent. If Udemy could provide me this tools with lower price than the existing ones in the market, I'm happy to pay.

Why? It looks cool, but how does this help me teach better, create more content, and earn more revenue? Maybe I’m just not seeing the big (AI) picture…

And you mentioned the six month free access, but is it paid thereafter? Will Udemy be selling access to this service/product for anyone? If so, how does the AI image creation model blend into the Udemy educational goals?

We are giving instructors 

6 months FREE access to Lummi Pro

! 

Please keep it free for instructors!! I am hoping that Udemy is not interested in this kind of revenue stream especially from instructors!!

This does not makes sense!!

This is not what Udemy's core ideology is!!

Let's use this tool to generate more revenue by

enrolling more students

making course designs more appealing

increasing enrollments for both Udemy and Instructors

Instructor Academy??

Clearly Udemy instructors are so bad at course creation that we need to be:

• Educated by an external course creator who's never published a course on Udemy before without heavy Udemy promotion.
• Provided a free trial and then possibly upsold to an AI tool.

Clearly I'm also missing some big picture stuff here.

I think something else is cooking here.

Hi @EvrimKanbur

Thanks for the note – in specific answer to your question here you go Was there a wave of feedback in the forums demanding new design tools? Yes – we got feedback from a large number of customers saying that the visual quality of several courses was sub par and in some cases not up to the same standard as our competitors, in particular in the Udemy Business domain – so this was grounded in two problems we were trying to solve for the end users:

• Learners – their request for higher quality and more consistent visuals across content (the variety they like is instructor styles, content, curriculum etc – but they wanted some more consistency on the course quality when it came to supplementary visuals used)
  
• UB Customers – one of the problems that was flagged to use for UB customers was when they are creating content of their own to supplement instructor content, they struggle with imagery – being able to source it in a cost-effective way, easily change images etc. This provides them a lightweight and easy alternative to some of the most costly tools out there.

In terms of paying for this – this is not mandatory in any way. Many instructors already use other AI image generation tools that they pay for themselves – here, we are giving instructors access to a tool for no additional cost or charge. At the end of the 6 months if you choose that you do not want to continue to use Lummi you can cancel. Like any feature we release, there is a cost to the company to maintain it - so we want to use the next few months to understand use cases in more depth, usage patterns etc. Again, usage is voluntary, not mandatory.

We are aware of the items you have flagged, and we have some of them in our roadmap such as the upload experience, student interaction tools etc. I say some of them as some of them are not in our control. Ill give you an example for the comment re UB learners. A few points:

We are currently running an experiment to have emails go out from our systems that are from the instructors to learners - why because this creates more visibility for the instructor, increase the chances the learners will engage with them directly and in test so far we have seen higher engagement.

What you may not be aware of is many UB customers want to very tightly control the communications that go to their learners and in many cases have opted out and specifically asked that Udemy nor the instructors communicate directly with the learners but instead through a central admin as Udemy is often part of a larger learning program. This is something we need to respect for our customers and give them choice. So, while I understand and appreciate your desire to communicate directly with UB learners – this is in many cases the opposite of what organizations and customers are asking for.

Hope that helps answer some of the points raised.

@Boris035

We agree Role Play is doing very well – there are very few products that come out of the gate perfect and that’s what our aim is to great an initial product we can be proud of and can continue to learn, iterate and improve.

In terms of the background, I added some of the context above. In answer to your specific questions:

Is it primarily intended to level up our existing courses (so we have to work backwards by redesigning the existing materials) you can use it to update your existing courses or you can say I don’t want to do that I only want to use this in my new courses. You could just use this to create a more compelling course card (the primary image shown on the course landing page and others) or you could say I don’t want to use Lummi at all. There is no mandate here – only options.

Did you envision it will dominantly be used for the upcoming innovations – we are using this internally to improve our images across assets, the website, video, presentations etc to help our designers achieve speed, quality and allow them to focus on the creative design process with greater efficiency. This includes using Lummi in the avatars for Role Play.

You can learn more about how you can use Lummi if you choose via the help center article here: https://teach.udemy.com/prompt-like-a-pro-how-instructors-can-get-the-best-visuals-on-lummi-ai/

Can you share more insights about “revamping the Instructor Academy”? Our goal here is to improve the teach site over time – we are calling this the Instructor Academy. What’s its goal? Provide instructors and potential instructors access to the info they need to support them in course creation in a more interactive way. Today, almost 100% of that site is text –as we all know, different people learn in different ways – so we want to provide text-based content where it make sense; video if that helps explain a point more easily and we also want to think about templates, integrations etc we can provide for instructors to help them as they create courses – this could be examples of what we see the highest-performing courses using etc, best practices for filming a particular stye etc. Also side note - adding video etc to this site will help us with SEO goals as video is treated differently by the LLM for serach. There are various articles on this - happy to direct you to some if interested.

On your point re M&A - context is important - this was an aquihire - what does that mean yes the Lummi team brought with them some tools they built, but really what we were acquiring was the talent (11 people total). This allows us to strengthen our investment in AI-driven product innovation for the benefit of learners, instructors and orgs (we hope). So I wouldn't say it's a large-scale full M&A by any means.

I have added a visual below, which is a mockup of the style we want to move towards to basically modernize the site but still keep all the content we know instructors use.

Thanks as always for the comments

@MichaelPog thanks for the comment. While you may feel comfortable with course creation, there are many new instructors to the platform who are looking for additional support and guidance. Also, many instructors are also designers, videographers etc in their own right or just generally spend a lot of time in tech and don't need support; others may be are more independent or again, just need / want help along the way. So thats what we are bringing here. Some instructors want deeper analytics; others just want to know how to structure a course in a more compelling way - we want to take the knowledge we have in-house with people who have built their careers in course design, learning psychology and best practices and share that with the community for those who would like to leverage it. It's a simple as that.

In terms of the Lummi team they are creators, designers and in some cases educators themselves - Pablo one of the founders, often holds workshops and teaches on design best practices - a snippet here https://www.together.art/gorgeous

Note Instructor Academy is the working title - maybe we just keep it as Instructor Center.

@GenefaMurph976 thank you so much for joining this dicussion and your clarification.
I always appreciate it!

Actually, the fact that UB customers are not happy with the quality of our production is big news to me.
I always listen to student reviews. As long as they are happy I stick to the same format. But we don't ever hear about UB customers.
Would it be possible to specifically hear what they are expecting?
Is the audio not good?
Is the video not good?
Are the visuals not good?
Are the exercises not good?
Are the course images not good?

Every one of those problems requires a completely different tool/solution.
I am in the technical space, so Role Play or other things like Lummi just don't apply to me, but I do want to provide the best experience possible.

As a side note, @GenefaMurph976:
In the past, after every launch of a course, I would set aside some budget to buy a new microphone, or see how I can improve the production in the future, like using a more expensive stock image site etc.
It's gotten REALLY hard to justify any additional expenses for course creation, we are fighting against ongoing revenue reductions.
But I still want to have that information from UB customers so I can make the call whether I want to work on those feedback items or not.

Great news! Thanks!

Thanks @GenefaMurph976 for your in-depth answer – I appreciate it.

Few hints from my side…

First, this announcement caught us unprepared – not the M&A deal per se, but the nature of the target. Once you explained Udemy's position (and feedback you have received from students), it makes more sense now – course standardization level throughout the platform is very low, and that’s not good for the corporate clients, so something has to be done about that – understood.

On top of that, we are all aware that the technology is developing very fast, and for sure, that has a huge impact on the course quality, suddenly being considered outdated or not (from the standpoint of applied audio, visual elements, selected topic, overall engagement, etc.).

Having that in mind, I think the Academy might be a very good answer and bridge the gap, especially for the exchange between us (instructors/creators) and the Udemy team (sitting on data and insights).

Maybe you (meaning the Udemy team) could (occasionally) share there some:

• Research outcomes of students’ preferences (like this one about them complaining about boring content or the need for more consistent visual elements),
• Trends (e.g., interactive videos, popular AI tools for the video creation, etc.),
• Templates and role models (e.g., top video lessons (or courses) of the year based on applied tools, creativity, storytelling style, maybe voted by students, etc. – you can even think of some sort of awards in that manner – it will be nice), and
• Similar materials within the Community or the Instructor Academy.

You can also think about adding coaches that we (instructors) could hire to level up the courses (e.g., as a freelancer, you can hire a coach at Fiverr to help you with your GIG)!?

After all, we all would like to be proud of our courses, and an insights exchange is part of the process!

I believe that will help us both to stay on the same page and push things together in the same direction.

Thanks again for the clarification.

Regards,

Boris

Thanks @GenefaMurph976 for the details.

I wonder if there’s a bit of negativity bias in UfB customer responses. All our courses are lumped together as “UfB” content, so a few courses that disappointed will bias users against the entire set.

Providing instructors a repository of royalty free images makes sense. I would throw out the following idea, based on my experience on other platforms:

If Udemy wants a stronger and more consistent student experience, I would suggest:

1. If a course connects itself to a UfB opportunity, making it clear the instructor is trying to get into UfB then their quality review process is more stringent.
2. Udemy provides an optional standard slide deck template (PowerPoint/Keynote/Google Slides) with standard fonts, color palettes, and iconography.
3. Udemy provides royalty free images and stock video (AI or preferably non-AI generated as well).
4. AI (with human backup) suggestions for course quality.
5. Recommended equipment (mic, camera, lights).

Udemy may not own the UfB content, but I bet many instructors would welcome anything that improves their chances for acceptance.

I like these suggestions @Tony on point 5 thats part of what we want to put in the academy / we are aiming to have that soon. We now have #3 and can look to expand to non AI too and #2 definately seems doable - will take that action.

Thanks @Boris035 - consider these added to our backlog. We recently did an in-person focus group with learners at our SF office so maybe we can set up an open session to share that research and feedback with the collective instructor community. Let me work on getting that scheduled.

@MichaelPog will work on getting that out to this community (Ill combine this with the data I mentioned to @Boris035) and yes completely understand your point on the cost - that's why we wanted to help solve this on our side to give you all access to the Lummi tools and honestly the design community.

You may not realize it but Lummi is essentially a community platform for designers to share their talents that's where all the images come from (the Lummi team itself is 11 people, and most are contributors) but the visuals are sourced from designers all around the world.

I’d like to thank Udemy for sharing this type of communication through the Instructor Community. It’s always valuable to get a sense—at least implicitly—of the direction the company is heading.

From what I’ve seen recently, including updates in this forum, platform changes, and some of the events Udemy has hosted, I get the impression that the company is moving toward becoming a more corporate-oriented platform focused on AI reskilling. I think the acquisition of Lummi.ai fits into that broader strategy.

First of all, I appreciate the transparency. Even if these announcements are high-level, they give us insight into the decisions being made by Udemy’s leadership. And second, I value the fact that we are being given tools—like Lummi—with a free trial period. I’m open to testing and using new tools, and I’m especially grateful for the six months of free access. After that, we’ll see whether Lummi proves useful in improving course quality and whether the pricing makes sense for instructors like myself.

In the end, I want to be aligned with Udemy’s strategy, as long as it benefits the instructor community and our students. We’re all in this together. More than anything, I sincerely hope that Udemy finds long-term financial stability, reaches profitability, keeps investors happy, and continues to provide us with a platform where we can teach, grow, and thrive.

"… and yes completely understand your point on the cost - that's why we wanted to help solve this on our side to give you all access to the Lummi tools and honestly the design community."
Thanks, @GenefaMurph976 .
It might help to provide us lifetime free access to some of these tools, then 😃
Really good quality stock images and footage (with lots of variety and options) are also expensive, so it will certainly help balance the revenue share cuts a teeny weeny bit !

Canva is enough for us and its price is affordable.

@SivakamiS2017 can't commit to that just yet as we do have costs to keep the tools alive, if you will - headcount, fixing bugs, adding features etc but all options are on the table.

Maybe you could poll the Instructors on the most valuable tools for them, and choose the top 2-3 common ones ... and get us a great (and I mean a significant one) discount !

Am hoping that it will be a game changer

Sorry. I don't mean to be negative, but this doesn't make sense to me.

If students and customers have complained about the quality of some courses, it most likely means that the instructor of those courses doesn't care about quality, and will most likely not use any tool anyway, or they might just use it while it is free.

IMO, the solution is not to buy tools or acquire companies, but bring the course quality requirements back up to where they were several years ago. If Udemy continues allowing anybody to publish courses with practically no quality requirements, like today, this will continue.

Hopefully this acquisition will not be used to cut revenue from instructors again, saying that it is because Udemy has been investing in new tools for instructors.

I agree with you, @CarlosDeLeon. I once reported a published course in my niche which consisted of nothing but stolen YouTube videos by other people – without their permission or crediting. After I reported it, Udemy took it down, but it definitely made it past the quality check of Udemy.

Any instructor who cares about quality would probably use one of the many available tools on the internet. I also don't want to be negative, I just wished, instructors were more involved in informing these investment decisions.