Kortext buys StudyStash as AI reshapes the education workforce

Kortext acquired adaptive learning platform StudyStash, the companies said on 2 October, a year after the startup's founders graduated from the University of Birmingham. Financial terms were not disclosed, according to Tech.eu.

StudyStash was founded by Ben Ward and Jonathan Graham. The pair met while studying computer science at the University of Birmingham and working together on PwC's technology degree apprenticeship. The platform began as a way for the two to turn their own course notes into study materials. It later developed into a business through the university's Elevate incubator programme, Tech.eu reported on 2 October.

StudyStash turns course content into personalised flashcards, practice tests and podcasts. Its technology adapts as students learn, helping them focus on weaker areas while giving lecturers and student success teams insight into where support is needed.

The University of Birmingham became StudyStash's first customer. The platform is now used by tens of thousands of students across more than 160 institutions in the UK, Europe, the US and Africa, including California State University, Minnesota State, Colorado State, the University of Oulu and RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, according to Tech.eu. It integrates with learning management systems including Canvas, Blackboard and Moodle.

Hiring data points in another direction

The deal lands against a backdrop of conflicting signals about how AI is changing work. On 30 September, Revelio Labs published research on AI investment and hiring that was featured by The Washington Post, and a separate Revelio Labs analysis the same week found heavy AI adopters are growing their workforces faster. On 29 September, McKinsey & Company published a workforce report on skills and pathways to future jobs in the United States, and Bloomberg reported the same day that the consultancy estimates AI may force 11 million workers into new jobs by 2035.

PwC's Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2026, published on 29 September, points to an emerging divide, with the firm's research showing a split in how workers are experiencing AI adoption. On 30 September, reports summarising the study said it identified a new workforce divide, and the-star.co.ke echoed that framing the following day.

Other surveys complicate the picture. Time Magazine reported on 30 September that workers worry AI will take jobs, just not theirs. On 2 October, KUTV reported on a study finding Gen Z is using AI but skepticism is growing, while a TradingView piece the same day argued the AI divide is becoming a workplace divide. Beinsure reported on 30 September that women trail men in generative AI adoption.

On the policy side, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a slate of AI workplace laws barring what KQED on 1 October called robo bosses and surveillance. ET Enterprise AI reported on 1 October that California became the first US state to restrict AI-led worker firings and discipline, and JDSupra on the same day outlined steps employers should take to prepare for rules requiring them to disclose when AI causes a mass layoff.

Where the talent actually is

Two studies published in the past week complicate the assumption that AI talent is concentrating in the United States. Research released by the think tank Carnegie China and reported by the South China Morning Post on 25 September found China employed 41 per cent of the world's leading AI researchers tracked by the study last year, ahead of the US at 34 per cent. That reverses the 2022 position, when the US held 46 per cent and China 27 per cent.

The SCMP attributed the shift to China's booming domestic AI industry and tighter US visa restrictions. The study was titled "Who's ahead in the global AI talent race".

A separate LexisNexis study, reported by the South China Morning Post on 1 October, found Chinese companies accounted for 44 per cent of the world's drone patent filings in 2024 against 17 per cent for American firms. Measured by value, however, US drone patents were on a par with China's. DJI held only 4 per cent of the industry's total patent assets, down from roughly 24 per cent at the end of 2018, the report found.

The workforce research extends beyond tech. A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and Aarhus University, published in JAMA Psychiatry and covered by ScienceDaily on 24 September, analysed more than 2.1 million children and adolescents in Denmark. It compared more than 71,000 young people diagnosed with ADHD or ASD between 2012 and 2022 with more than 713,000 who had not received either diagnosis.

The researchers found that children diagnosed in recent years more closely resemble their peers in the general population than those diagnosed a decade earlier. Low birth weight offers one example: at the start of the study period, children born with low birth weight were 54 per cent more likely to later receive an ADHD or ASD diagnosis than children born at normal weight. By the end, the difference had dropped to 17 per cent.

"The key message is not that these risk factors are no longer important," said Magnus Elias Tarp, a PhD student at Aarhus University and first author of the study. "What we found is that people diagnosed in recent years resemble the general population more closely than those who received the same diagnoses a decade ago."

For employers building AI-adjacent hiring plans, the throughline is measurement. The datasets cited above disagree on direction: McKinsey's 11 million figure implies displacement, Revelio Labs' findings suggest adoption correlates with headcount growth, and the Carnegie China study shows the geography of elite talent is shifting. StudyStash's sale price, like the terms of most edtech acquisitions this year, remains undisclosed.