A few weeks ago at ATD ’26 in Los Angeles, one of the questions that came up in conversations from people across the L&D ecosystem was some version of: “Does the expo hall feel lighter to you?” One marketing leader who has attended ATD for 10+ years shared with me that in a normal year, they said, you can barely see the end of the vendor hall because there are so many rows of booths. This year, they could see both ends.
It’s no secret that many in the space are watching for signs of consolidation, M&A activity, and market movement. Unfortunately, without last year’s exhibitor list to compare against, it’s hard to say for sure whether the hall actually shrank. But perception is reality, and I think the bigger question is important to consider – where is the broader market for L&D vendors headed, and what can we make of where it is today?
While I couldn’t find last year’s data from ATD, I was able to pull the full list of vendor sponsors from the ATD Website. After doing some analysis, I was able to find some interesting insights:
Mapping The 289 Vendors (But First, How I Built The Dataset)
The ATD ’26 exhibitor list totaled about 289 vendors. I categorized every one of them into a taxonomy I built myself, partly because ATD’s own categories didn’t hold up under scrutiny. To give one example: ATD’s taxonomy placed 69 vendors, nearly a quarter of the floor, into a single category labeled “AI.” When I re-sorted those 69 companies by what they actually do, they spanned more than a dozen different categories which M made myself, LMS/LXP platforms, translation services, compliance training, video tools, coaching simulators. To be sure, there’s a bit of subjectivity where I drew lines in the sand, but I think I did a pretty fair job of making them realistic and reasonable.
One other thing that I did was pulled sponsor and exhibitor data from roughly 20 other L&D, talent, and HR conferences in the United States that publish this information, and used Claude to help me cross-reference vendors, sponsorship tiers, and categories across the full dataset. What follows is what jumped out.
The Top Categories At ATD ’26
The chart below shows the most popular vendor categories at ATD ’26. A few examples of who sits in each just to give some context:
- Custom Learning Solutions: ELB Learning, GP Strategies
- LMS/LXP: 360 Learning, Absorb
- Leadership Development IP & Training: Blanchard, Everything DiSC (Wiley), Crucial Learning, Center for Leadership Studies
- Executive Education: London Business School, MIT Sloan
Two things struck me when I looked at the 289 vendors.
First, is Content. It was eye-opening to see just how many vendors in this space, including the technology and software companie, anchor their value proposition in having content and curriculum. This isn’t a surprise by any means to anyone but when you map the list, it really hits you in the face.
Second, the human piece. Even among the technology-enabled companies, an enormous number of vendors rely on people, services, and facilitation as a core part of the business. I think about this, in the context of the move toward forward-deployed engineering, and just how important the ability to drive outcomes (which in the most case is behavioral change of some kind) that sit at the heart of the capabilities of these solutions.
LMS/LXP still dominates, In vendors and in dollars
You don’t have to go far to hear questions about where the category is headed as a result of AI. . That said, it still dominates ATD not just in vendor count, but in spend.
This year, there were 16 “Platinum” Sponsors at ATD (the highest level of sponsorship), 7 were LMS/LXP providers. Nearly half the top sponsorship tier belongs to a single category. Despite the overall noise in the category, there is still a lot of interest/spend to get in front of an audience.
Interestingly enough, a separate cut of this showed that of these 16 platinum sponsors, 7 of them only sponsored ATD this year out of the many other Talent and L&D conferences that exist. One plausible explanation could be that this was their big marketing splash of the year. Their Super Bowl. Interestingly, the “ATD-only” group and the LMS/LXP group barely overlap. The platform vendors who bought Platinum (Absorb, 360 Learning, Docebo, Articulate) tend to be everywhere, several of them bought Platinum-level placements at other conferences too.
Coaching is being replaced by AI coaching
From roughly 2021 to 2024, coaching vendors dominated the ATD scene. BetterUp, Ezra Coaching, Torch, Sounding Board, CoacHub, etc, had some of the most visible presences on the expo floor. This year, the Coaching category is down to six vendors, and almost none of them are large players in the space with the exception of Randstand. There are a few possible reasons for this. First, you could argue 21-24 was the run where these comapnies satured the market/buyer and they don’t need to speak to them as much anymore because of 21-24. Second, the market evolved. A number of these companies were bought or no longer exist, and finally, some of the ones still around have moved upmarket to the CHRO. Based on my own analysis of the broader HR Conference Market, many of the big names have moved upmarket to the CHRO conference curcuit, or have focused more on sponsoring more high profile and prestigous business journalism events (ex: Fortune, WSJ, etc)
In their place, a new category is filling the vacuum: AI Coaching & Performance. By my count it’s now 18 vendors at ATD, the fifth largest category on the entire floor, bigger than compliance, translation, or AR/VR. These are companies doing AI-powered roleplay, conversation simulation, communication coaching, and performance feedback: Yoodli, Zenerate, Quantified, ReflexAI, Tenor, Hone, and a dozen others.
But at least so far, this is still an emerging category that’s dipping their toes. 14 of those 18 vendors bought the cheapest exhibitor tier available. Only two, Speak for Business and UMU, went Platinum. And those two Platinum buyers were also ATD-only players, while smaller competitors like Zenerate and ReflexAI spread their budget across other L&D conferences (more on that later) Two opposite go-to-market theories inside the same young category: one big swing on the biggest stage, or lots of small bets closer to the buyer.
Beyond ATD: Who has made events part of their Go To Market strategy?
ATD is the biggest gathering in L&D (roughly 8,000 attendees), but it’s far from the only place buyers show up. I wanted to get a better understanding of who from ATD was investing a presence at other L&D and HR Conferences in the United States. I was able to find about 20 other conferences that met this criteria. Across the 20 or so other conferences in my dataset, I looked for the vendors treating events as a strategic go-to-market channel. (Note: For brevity’s sake, I’m not listing the conferences, but if you want to see the data set please send me a note and I can share it with you)
Ten companies exhibited at ATD and appeared at four or more conferences in total across the 20 conferences in my dataset:
- Absorb (LMS/LXP)
- Abilitie (Simulations)
- Mindsmith (Instructional Design Tools)
- Unboxed (Custom Learning Solutions)
- 360 Learning (LMS/LXP)
- Zenarate (AI Coaching & Performance)
- Whatfix (Change Management)
- Cognota (Learning Operations)
- ReflexAI (AI Coaching & Performance)
- NovoEd (LMS/LXP)
If you’re showing up at four or five conferences in this space in a single year, chances are you’re pushing hard for growth (or at least your investors are) and you have a healthy appetite to meet the mid-market and enterprise buyers who attend these events. It’s also worth noting the mix: the circuit players include both traditional services-based L&D companies and technology-driven solutions.
What’s The “So What” and Where to Go Next?
In my conversations with people across the L&D ecosystem, the next 12 to 18 months will be interesting to see moves from a strategy, consolidation, and M&A Activity perspective. Interesting to note: it does appear that at least at ATD, The biggest sponsorship money at ATD are for categories that typically are being associated as seeing the most potential disruption from AI – LMS/LXP, content and curriculum, etc. While I wouldn’t say the ATD data set reveals much toward definitive directions of where the broader market will go, but at least for now, it shows where dollar investments are being made, who is making them, and what categories of solutions they represent today.