Jean Shia
Kate Buchanan
In the second installment of our Insights Series, we shed light on the evolution for our workforce portfolio.
In June 2026, Autodesk and the Autodesk Foundation became a founding partner in RAISE US, a new cross-sector coalition designed to address the worker transition in the AI economy. For the Autodesk Foundation, this signaled a shift in our approach to funding workforce development solutions – one that builds on the learnings of the past decade.
Since our founding, we have used capital and in-kind resources to derisk innovations that address climate change and improve worker prosperity. For climate, that meant investing in new technologies and the broader tech innovation ecosystem. For workforce, we focused on supporting early-stage organizations helping workers adapt to a rapidly changing labor market.
These solutions spanned demand-driven skills and vocational training, apprenticeships and industry-recognized credentials, and wraparound support. We invested in solutions that were connected to true employer demand to meaningfully help underserved workers secure, retain, and advance in quality jobs in growing industries.
What we’ve learned
From 2019 to 2025, the Autodesk Foundation invested $21 million in financial capital and $6 million in in-kind support across 26 workforce portfolio organizations. In 2025 alone, this portfolio supported more than 438,000 individuals in obtaining quality jobs.
We backed numerous new organizations that leveraged technology in how they delivered solutions to workers. These were significant point solutions, but struggled to deliver deeper worker outcomes such as job placements or wage gains.
We also supported place-based models that were deeply rooted in industry and local employer ecosystems. These organizations achieved meaningful outcomes in job placements and wage gains but were limited in terms of replicability and scale.
Our experience reinforced the notion that innovation alone does not create scale. This insight changed in how we think about enabling impact outcomes in workforce development. We need orchestrators that connect workers, training providers, employers, and government to build stronger pathways into quality jobs. With this infrastructure in place, technology solutions help make those pathways to quality jobs more scalable, efficient, and accessible.
For a corporate philanthropy like ours, this realization has prompted us to broaden how we think about innovation, backing not only individual solutions, but prioritizing the systems and partnerships that enable those solutions to deliver impact at both depth and breadth.
“Previously, we saw our primary role as enabling innovation in workforce. Now, we embrace the growing need for collaborative action to shift systems at scale. This means evolving Autodesk Foundation’s role in workforce from a venture-style investor in early-stage solutions toward being a strategic partner in major ecosystems.”
The AI disruption is upon us, with constant changes in how and where we learn and work. Workers face the pressure to continuously upskill around fast changing technologies, while employers, educators, and governments face a challenge that no single program or organization can address on its own. The market has evolved, and de-risking innovation is no longer the primary constraint to workforce impact.
Where we’re headed
Our refreshed strategy focuses on fewer, larger investments that leverage Autodesk resources, expertise, and industry connections to enable system-level change. This shift begins with a multi-year grant to RAISE US. RAISE US brings businesses, nonprofits, and government together around workforce challenges that are too large and interconnected to solve independently. Our collaboration will include exploring pilots with state governments, pioneering post-secondary investments, emerging employer partnerships, and an AI-policy lab.
Our aim is not simply to fund larger organizations. We are looking for partners capable of changing how the workforce ecosystem operates—and places where Autodesk Foundation capital, Autodesk’s industry expertise, and convening power can make that work stronger.
The urgency is growing, but so is the opportunity.