This urgency is already showing up in practice and many enterprises are discovering that skills, not strategy, are the biggest barrier to AI adoption. Deloitte's 2026 State of AI in the Enterprise report finds that insufficient worker skills are now the biggest barrier to integrating AI into how work actually gets done. Hiring alone won't close that gap; there aren't enough experienced practitioners in the market to staff every team that needs them. The path forward is upskilling the people you already have.

But the way most teams approach training isn't built for that: A one-time enablement push or an annual training event can't keep pace with a platform that ships new products and features regularly. The skills your team needed at the start of the year might be outdated by the end of the year — and that's just the platform changing, before you account for areas like agents and AI governance that didn't exist a year ago. Upskilling has to be ongoing capability the team builds, not a standalone event the team attends.

A pattern shows up across the small group of organizations getting compounding returns from AI — what BCG calls “future-built” companies, growing revenue at 1.7x the rate of laggards. They allocate resources differently: BCG estimates that two-thirds of AI investment should go to people-related capabilities, not tools. And in the teams getting this right, learning is continuous, every learner on the team has access — not just a chosen few — and the training is tied to the work the team actually does.

To meet this need, we built Databricks Academy Pro- an annual, per-seat subscription that allows every learner to continuously upskill in whatever format works for them — self-paced courses, live instructor-led classes, hands-on labs, or a blend of all three. Every format runs in a real Databricks environment, so learners are practicing in the same place they work. And as the platform evolves, new training follows the products and features your team needs.

What makes Academy Pro different is the combination. Self-paced learning, live instructor-led classes and hands-on labs are all unlimited and sit inside one subscription — no per-format limits, no add-on purchases.