Udacity adds 14 hiring partners as AI, VR and self-driving talent wars heat up

Udacity is positioned perfectly to benefit from the rush on talent in a number of growing areas of interest among tech companies and startups. The online education platform has added 14 new hiring partners across its Artificial Intelligence Engineer, Self-Driving Car Engineer and Virtual Reality Developer Nanodegree programs, as well as in its Predictive Analytics Nanodegree, including standouts like Bosch, Harma, Slack, Intel, Amazon Alexa and Samsung.

That brings the total number of hiring partners for Udacity to over 30, which means a lot of potential soft landings for graduates of its nanodegree programs. The nanodegree offered by Udacity is its own original form of accreditation, which is based on a truncated field of study that spans months, rather than years, and allows students to direct the pace of their own learning. It also all takes place online, so students can potentially learn from anywhere.

For Udacity, hiring partners help prove the value of their program to potential students, as they’re effectively votes of confidence made by exactly the kinds of companies where students are looking to get jobs. For its hiring partners, Udacity’s program is a new funnel for talent, which is in short supply, especially in the areas where Udacity tends to offer nanodegrees, as their creation is driven by market demand. Sourcing top talent in these fields from traditional institutions like colleges and universities is incredibly competitive, expensive and potentially impossible, given the intense interest from almost all tech companies, big and small.

Here’s the full list of Udacity’s new partners, as organized by program:

  • Self-Driving Car Nanodegree – Bosch, HARMAN, Dataspeed, Auro Robotics and CrowdAI
  • AI Nanodegree – Amazon Alexa, Intel, Slack and Mobvoi
  • Virtual Reality Nanodegree – Samsung, Lucid VR, Nod, Upload
  • Predictive Analytics Nanodegree – Telefonica Germany