AceUp

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Founders: Rohit Begani, Will Guillaume Foussier, Joshua Templeton
Founding: 2017
Mission: Unleash Your Teams’ Full Potential
Employees: 65 & 25% Local
Workplace: Hybrid
Stage & Capital Raised: Series A & $30M+ raised
Investors: PJC, Techstars Ventures, 2Enabled Partners, Gaingels Ventures, Water Bear Ventures, and Launchpad Ventures
Key Customers: IBM, Teradyne, NTT Data, LVMH, L’Oréal, John Deere, Suffolk, and Waste Management
Glassdoor Rating: 4.3
Valuation (estimated): $75M – $150M (assuming average equity dilution in the $22.5M Series A fundraise)
^ this is a useless number from MGMT Boston. There is no tangible valuation until the business is sold or goes public. Don’t forget it!

AceUp is the AI-powered Team Transformation Engine, a leading provider globally of human-centered leadership© development solutions for individuals and teams. AceUp helps innovative, purpose-driven enterprises build high-performing teams at scale, and upskill leaders at all levels to unleash their full potential.

They combine AI-Powered 1-on-1 leadership coaching, systemic team coaching, and robust talent analytics to maximize team engagement, alignment, and performance at scale. Their clients include LVMH, L’Oreal, IBM, Teradyne, Veolia, WPP, John Deere, Eutelsat, PVH, WM, and Doctolib among many others. AceUp was named one of the fastest-growing private companies by Inc. Magazine and featured on the Inc. 5000 list for 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Will Guillaume Foussier is the Co-Founder & CEO of AceUp. His belief that we can do well by doing good fuels his passion for empowering others through science-based, AI-Powered Leadership Development and Team Coaching that AceUp deploys at scale. As a Harvard, EHL, and Techstars alumnus, and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Will has a background in entrepreneurship, social impact, and finance.

He founded AceUp out of the Harvard Innovation Labs to help organizations build human connections and thriving teams in the new world of work. Since its launch in 2017, AceUp has raised more than $30 million and has been deployed in more than 100 organizations including IBM, LVMH, L’Oreal, BNP, John Deere, WM, Teradyne, Essilorluxottica, PVH and many others.

Will is also a Strategic Advisor at the Institute of Coaching, affiliated with Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital, and a founding member of the IOC of the Research Consortium for Human-Centered Leadership. He partners with Global Business and HR leaders all over the world to create cultures of coaching that unleash individuals, teams, and organizations’ full potential.

Will uncovered a fragmented, expensive, and opaque coaching industry accessible to only a privileged few. In Cambridge he dove deeper and had doors opened, learning from top experts in the field like Peter Hawkins, Carol Kauffman, Marshall Goldsmith & others whose teachings & guidance helped craft a unique perspective in how to apply technology to coaching. 

Will applied to the Harvard iLab to start his entrepreneurial journey…and was rejected. But like any good startup story he dusted himself off, applied again, and was accepted. Alongside Rohit Begani & Joshua Templeton their team began building a technology driven platform to match employees to coaches and measure the business impact of these interactions. Over the years, by integrating advanced analytics and AI, AceUp has built an operating system for enterprise scale to ensure every coach initiative is aligned to tangible business outcomes.

U.S. companies spent $98B on training in 2024 (src). With digital transformation and now AI, there are continued shifts in how training is delivered and measured. The half-life of skills is shrinking rapidly. The median number of years employees spend with an employer was 4.1 in 2022 and is 3.9 years in 2024 (src). Technical proficiencies that once defined a 10-15 year career track expire much faster!

Organizations recognize that their growth and adaptability hinge on “human skills” like leadership. AceUp is building the AI driven leadership & development platform to provide scalable, personalized coaching for every level of an organization. 

By focusing on how individual behaviors reinforce team dynamics (and vice versa), AceUp tackles upskilling in a way that ties directly to performance metrics. They primarily work with large enterprises, from IBM to L’Oréal to LVMH to John Deere. These organizations need to navigate disruption and develop leaders so team agility makes all the difference.

AceUp has carved out a distinct approach by combining executive coaching with team solutions through its Team Transformation Model. Their platform uses AI-driven assessments to map out each organization’s specific leadership and skill framework, pinpointing exactly where gaps exist. AceUp then delivers training, microlearning content, and/or human-led coaching to the right people at the right time.

Everything is customized to the organization and on down to the individual, unleashing another level of scalability & data centricity. AceUp’s tools connect individual development to larger team goals, aligning everything with measurable outcomes for the organization. Customers can link coaching initiatives to concrete metrics like performance improvements, efficiency gains, and business results through a “skill taxonomy”. Robust analytics are at the core to deliver strategic change management, increased performance, and upskilling & reskilling.

The team closed a $22.5M Series A in the fall of 2024 to fuel R&D, product development, and global expansion. They’ve navigated major challenges over the past few years like having the majority of their technical team in Ukraine, building further resilience. Over the past four years, AceUp has maintained a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) above 60%. The company has on-boarded over 60 corporate customers and aims to reach 100+ enterprises by the end of 2025. Their team will also be developing stronger partnerships with strategic & financial partners. Macroeconomic headwinds? AceUp is doing what they do best, doubling down on agility & managing operational risk. 

At the 2025 Transform Conference in Las Vegas, AceUp was a finalist in two categories – “People Reporting & Insights of 2025” and “L&D Program of 2025” for its Team Transformation Engine.Most recently, AceUp has streamlined a way for potential new customers to run a quick, frictionless team assessment. In as little as one week, companies can identify performance gaps and roll out targeted solutions to drive alignment and team success through its Team Transformation Accelerator program.

AceUp currently has ~65 employees worldwide and the company maintains a strong presence in Boston, its “home” from the Harvard iLab days. For those looking to connect for potential partnerships, evaluation, or simply peer-to-peer founder support, AceUp is here to lead!

Operators Know:

Key Roles To Be Hired:

  • Global Account Managers
  • Enterprise Account Executives
  • AI/ML Engineers
  • More roles coming in the months ahead!

If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:

  • What makes AceUp unique in the learning & development space? 
  • What are the biggest challenges as you scale the team past 65 employees? 
  • What is the global expansion plan? And the long term vision for the company? 
  • What are the most important roles you’ll be looking to add in 2025 // teams that need the most help?

We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about AceUp you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring more leaders into the age of AI. All enterprises & teams applaud your efforts. See you around town!

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