AI reigns supreme at Learning Technologies 2025

This week, Rob Mackenzie, Corey Mitchell and I headed to London for Learning Technologies 2025 – the industry’s biggest, brightest and busiest event. Thousands of L&D professionals descended on the London ExCeL to discover what vendors are offering in 2025, as well as what the industry’s best-known thought leaders are seeing as the emerging trends.

What became immediately apparent was that the L&D industry is at a crossroads. Vendors are bursting with AI-powered ambition (and, I suspect, a need to hop on the AI bandwagon), but is the innovation really there yet?

Here are my key takeaways from another busy event.

Rob Mackenzie and James Cranwell at Learning Technologies 2025

The rise of AI…

We saw the usual mix of vendors, talks and tech, but with one giant difference: the prevalence of AI. Virtually every single stand had some reference to AI, with varying degrees of clarity and differentiation.

There’s no denying that AI stole the show. From AI coaches to AI-generated content and AI-powered curation, it’s clear that many vendors have gone all-in on artificial intelligence. Every stand seemed to promise a smarter, more efficient future – one where your learning platform learns you.

And that’s great! You’ll know that we at 5app are massive fans of AI, with VeeCoach, VeeCreate and our exciting upcoming launch. But it did start to feel a little copy-and-paste, with every vendor promoting the same AI offerings, with little to distinguish Vendor A’s take on AI from Vendor B’s.

… and the fall of everything else

With AI demanding so much attention, it was clear that something had to give – I just wasn’t necessarily expecting that everything else would be thrown out to make space for AI.

A few years ago, it was VR and AR that were hailed as the next big thing in learning tech. Today? They’ve all but vanished from the conversation. Gamification? Gone. Social learning? MIA. 

Aside from AI, one of the only other themes at Learning Technologies 2025 was a smattering of new data insight platforms. These platforms reveal how data can be used to personalise learning experiences using… you guessed it! AI! But the focus on data made a nice change from the AI sameness, and I believe data is set to become a huge priority for L&D teams in 2025.

Three vendor camps, one message

Walking the exhibition floor at Learning Technologies 2025, the vendors fell broadly into three categories:

• The big players
  The biggest, flashiest stands came from the usual names, who are now positioning themselves as intelligent learning ecosystems.
• The content creators
  Dotted around the expo floor were a bunch of smaller, content-focused vendors – not just content libraries, but also recommendation engines and automated learning paths.
• The AI specialists
  Most of the new names popped up in this camp, with a laser-focus on specific aspects of AI, including AI video editing, AI voiceovers, AI authoring tools and AI assistants. All fascinating in isolation, but it will be interesting to see how these tools integrate into the wider learning ecosystem, as most of these tools aren’t designed specifically for L&D – they’d fit just as neatly at a marketing or advertising conference.

It will be interesting to see who wins in the battle of the behemoths vs the hyperspecialists when it comes to AI – or, of course, you could always choose the best of both worlds with a small-but-perfectly-formed vendor like 5app. We’re not doing everything with AI, but where we are using it, we’re doing it well. We don’t believe in using AI for the sake of AI, so we’re only using it where it counts.

Innovation or convergence?

One of my main takeaways from Learning Technologies 2025 was how much the L&D space is converging. Platforms and content providers are starting to look and sound remarkably similar, with the unique value propositions getting harder to pin down. In fact, I wonder how many vendors turned to ChatGPT to brainstorm this year’s clever slogans and promotional messaging!

For example, we saw a few solutions aiming to enhance skills feedback loops with AI. But none felt like they were offering a true leap forward – more like speeding up existing processes rather than rethinking them altogether.

And for those of us looking for something bold, fresh or different? There wasn’t much on offer.

So, what’s next?

The future of learning technology doesn’t lie in just bolting on AI. The tools we choose must feel meaningful and be designed to solve a real business issue – they shouldn’t just be clever for clever’s sake.

At 5app, we’re excited by the potential of AI, but we’re equally grounded in what learners and organisations actually need. For us, it’s not about building the biggest or flashiest tool – it’s about building the right one.