As we kick off 2026, it’s important to look back and reflect on a year of meaningful progress. In 2025, we saw skills strategies transition from planning to execution, with organizations across industries embedding validated skills data into their operations, training, and overall business scaling processes. For Kahuna, it was a year of focused growth. We launched new products, grew our partner network, gained momentum with customers, and continued to add team members to the Kahuna ‘Ohana. Let’s take a look back at all we accomplished!
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From Strategy to Execution: Validated Skills Driving Real Outcomes
In our past year-in-review blogs, we’ve highlighted the growing interest in skills strategies. Throughout 2025, we saw that interest turn increasingly into execution. Organizations across industries began operationalizing skills to understand how they could better improve readiness, compliance, workforce planning, and career development—tying workforce capability directly to business outcomes.
Leaders across HR, operations, learning, digital transformation, and frontline training also began aligning around the common thread of validated skills data and the need for this as a daily input for staffing, development, deployment, and more. We also saw a continuation of the shift from static, job-based models to dynamic, skills and role-based workforce strategies. Deloitte highlighted that “task- and skills-based approaches to workforce planning can grant organizations an additional level of detail to refine their approach and hone in on their critical needs,” and 93% of the organizations they surveyed agreed that moving away from the job-construct is important to their success.
AI and the Future of Skills Technology
Artificial intelligence (AI) also made significant headlines throughout the year. In the context of skills, many solutions now tout AI-driven insights and talent intelligence; yet, in frontline and technical industries, the reality remains: AI can augment, but not replace, the human validation needed to ensure someone is truly qualified to perform their role.
To this end, Kahuna is leaning into the use cases that leverage various flavors of AI, focusing on how we can make the user experience more efficient while also bringing in the vast amount of operational skills data that resides within the platform. We released our first AI-enabled features in 2025, which set the foundation for multiple fit-for-purpose use cases to come in 2026. Kahuna is committed to delivering exceptional value through the inclusion of AI, while balancing the inevitable considerations this technology poses. Our hunch is that by next year’s reflection, we won’t be thinking about ‘AI’ as something separate, but rather, it will be a whole array of tooling that is table-stakes for many aspects of our platform. It’s an exciting time to be in technology!
Product Innovation and Evolution
Kahuna Ladder: Modernizing Career Advancement
Kahuna Ladder officially launched in July to help organizations build more transparent and engaging career ladder and lattice programs. Often referred to as “Clinical Ladder” in Healthcare, “Fixed-step progression” in Manufacturing, or “Technical Career Ladder” in Energy and Field Services, these programs are more critical than ever as retention of frontline workers is a key priority for our customers.
Built in close collaboration with our customers, we’re incredibly proud that Ladder reflects the real structures and workflows used in frontline career advancement. Seamlessly integrated with Kahuna’s core Skills Manager, it supports structured, skills-based development programs, allowing employees to map out their next steps, track progress, and earn recognition, while giving leaders a streamlined, paper-free way to manage development and compliance, without pulling focus from day-to-day operations. Whether supporting pay-for-skills initiatives, enabling clearer pathways for technical role progression, or documenting development for regulatory audits, Kahuna Ladder provides a scalable and transparent, role-based career development framework to grow and retain critical talent.
Mobile App Launch: Skills Validation at the Point of Work
We released our redesigned mobile app to support real-time skills validation, readiness tracking, and experience documentation, right from the floor, field, or job site. The mobile experience, available on iOS and Android, gives supervisors and frontline employees an easier way to engage with skills data without interrupting work. Kahuna customers have already reported significant gains using the mobile app, with one leading healthcare organization seeing a 20% decrease in Time to Competency with the app’s adoption.
Kahuna Insights: Turning Skills Data into Action
We also introduced Kahuna Insights, giving customers robust analytics and a new level of clarity into their workforce capabilities. Insights turns complex skills data into clean, intuitive dashboards that help leaders close gaps, improve readiness, and align development with operational priorities. Whether tracking compliance, evaluating training effectiveness, or anticipating workforce shifts, organizations can make decisions faster without relying on manual reports or complex integrations.
Expanding Our Market Presence
Building a Connected Ecosystem
In 2025, we grew our partner program to deliver even greater value to customers, expanding our ecosystem across technology, services, and go-to-market partnerships.
Our technology partnerships focused on ensuring frontline skills data is not siloed, but actively informs operational execution and enables seamless data flow across the organization. Our service partners provided hands-on support to help customers design and scale their skills and competency management programs. On the go-to-market side, coordinated customer engagements allowed us to speak with a more unified voice about the outcomes of skills programs, including improved safety and performance, as well as faster time to competence.
- Workday Gold Innovation Partner and Certified Integration: This year, Kahuna became the first frontline skills management Workday Gold Innovation Partner and earned the Workday Certified Integration. This achievement is a major milestone, and ultimately reflects that Kahuna has met rigorous Workday standards for security, reliability, and interoperability. It’s also a clear signal of our strategic value in connecting validated skills data with enterprise HCM and learning systems. As more organizations shift toward skills-based operating models, alignment between talent, operations, and learning is essential for scaling efforts and driving impact. This partnership helps Kahuna customers build stronger, more connected skills strategies across their entire workforce.
- eSkillz: Our partnership with eSkillz supports customers with personalized learning services and technology enablement. Together, we help organizations better integrate learning and skills validation into their broader talent strategies.
- Intecrowd: Through our relationship with Intecrowd, Kahuna customers gain access to expert Workday implementation and support services, simplifying the process of deploying and maintaining our certified Workday integration.
- Indeavor: Indeavor’s workforce management capabilities connect tightly with Kahuna’s validated skills data to enhance shift planning and scheduling. Customers can deploy the right person to the right job based on real-time readiness and compliance insights.
- Relias: Our integration with Relias aligns Kahuna’s competency data with Relias’ leading clinical training tools. This supports healthcare organizations in linking education to actual skills development and performance improvement.
- Vocantas: By combining Vocantas’ automated communications and employee engagement tools with Kahuna’s skilling platform, organizations can streamline scheduling, training reminders, and critical workforce updates.
Advancing Skills Research With Mercer
We also partnered with Mercer, a global leader in risk, strategy, and people, to contribute to ongoing research on skills-based organizations. The collaboration brings a sharper focus to how validated skills data strengthens workforce planning, particularly for frontline and technical roles. The research outlines how better tracking and management of frontline skills can directly impact profitability, reduce safety incidents and downtime, and improve retention by creating clear, mobile-accessible career pathways tailored to the complexity of operational work.
Conversations with Frontline Workforce Leaders
Throughout the year, we connected with leaders across the country through both in-person and virtual events focused on the real-world challenges of managing skills and competency at scale. We were especially excited to be joined by customers who shared firsthand experiences and practical lessons from deploying skills programs with Kahuna during speaking sessions and panels. Across all of our conversations, a consistent theme emerged: regardless of industry, organizations are under increasing pressure to demonstrate workforce readiness, reduce variation in competency, and make faster, more confident staffing decisions. As we look ahead to 2026, we’re excited to continue connecting with organizational leaders across industries to help them turn skills and competency data into real-world action.
Customer Growth, Retention, and Expansions
Expanding Across Industries
2025 also brought a 20% YoY increase in new logos across our core verticals of energy, field service, manufacturing, and healthcare, with each reflecting the importance of validated skills in complex industries. These new customers span North America, South America, Asia, and Europe, and include nine Fortune 500 organizations, from global offshore operators to precision-driven manufacturers, as well as some of the nation’s most respected health systems, including 11 ANCC Magnet®-designated organizations.
In energy, new customers are reducing operational risk, minimizing downtime, and ensuring the right people are deployed to the right assets by validating role-specific skills and compliance needs. In manufacturing, organizations are standardizing onboarding, improving quality, and aligning capability with production demands across global sites. In healthcare, systems are accelerating onboarding, supporting clinical ladder programs, and improving audit and survey readiness. Across all industries, Kahuna is helping organizations move from assumptions to confident, data-driven decisions.
"Kahuna stands out as one of the best-designed work tools I have ever used. The system truly prioritizes user experience and delivers significant value in the workplace. From a customer service perspective, Kahuna deserves a perfect score—every interaction we've had with their team has been with people who are highly skilled and genuinely focused on the customer. I am proud to partner with Kahuna to help support the growth and development of our employees."
In addition to welcoming new customers, we maintained a 90%+ customer logo retention rate for the seventh consecutive year and continued to grow within our existing customer base through organic expansions into new departments, plants, and business units, as well as through the adoption of new products such as Kahuna Ladder. These expansions reflect the growing maturity of skills and competency programs, along with the rising demand for more transparent, accessible career pathing and development initiatives. We’re excited to continue adding to an already incredible roster of customers in the coming year!
Financing to Power Growth
We also secured financing from Stifel Bank, a strategic investment that supports continued innovation across our product suite, expansion of our partner ecosystem, and long-term growth. This financial structure strengthens our ability to deliver the scale, stability, and momentum our customers count on, and it’s one more way that we’re continuing to invest to ensure the future of Kahuna and the success of the organizations we serve.
Investing In Our People, Our Customers, and Our Communities
Growing the Kahuna ‘Ohana
Each achievement this year, from product launches to customer growth, has been made possible by the Kahuna ‘Ohana. In 2025, we welcomed new employees across each department, growing our team with over 25 new employees globally, including our inaugural hires in our partnerships and account management functions. Sean Rohde was also promoted to Chief Revenue Officer, an important promotion as we look to continue scaling our revenue operations and expanding our reach across industries.
We also opened the doors to our new Houston headquarters, which is a space built to support how our team works, collaborates, and grows. With modern amenities and direct access to Houston’s vibrant business and innovation community, the new office gives our team the environment they need to continue building great products and delivering for our customers. Houston has long been part of Kahuna’s foundation, and this move deepens our commitment to the people, industries, and talent that make it a great place to grow a company.
Strengthening our Kahuna Advisory Board
The Kahuna Advisory Board is continuing to thrive with the 2025 expansion into Europe, including our first session in Norway. We also introduced new product breakout sessions, designed to support deeper discussions in each of our meetings. Key themes across industries included an increasing interest in time-to-competence metrics, AI-driven capabilities, and enterprise integrations, such as Workday.
Kahuna Gives Back
Giving back to the community has always been part of who we are at Kahuna, and in 2025, we continued to invest time and resources into causes that matter, especially those close to home.
In Houston, we deepened our partnership with the Houston Food Bank, where our team helped sort and pack over 29,000 pounds of food, providing more than 24,000 meals to families across Southeast Texas. Alongside our hands-on work, we contributed a financial donation to help extend the Houston Food Bank’s impact. It’s a small way we can support the city that’s helped shape our company and continues to fuel our growth.
In addition to our local Houston philanthropy events, we strive to keep a pulse on the events and activities important to our customers. It’s a small way we can “reach across the aisle,” go beyond our own backyard, and support our customer community. In 2025, we participated in the Little People Big Problems hosted by Lurie Children’s Center for Transport Medicine, as well as the 50th Annual Professional Nurse Educators Group (PNEG) 2025 National Nursing Conference hosted by Mayo Clinic.
As always, we are extremely grateful to our customers, partners, and the full Kahuna team for making 2025 an exciting, fulfilling year where so much was achieved! You all are the reason this work matters, and we are excited to continue into 2026!
