Coursera (COUR) Stock: Slips Nearly 3% as Andrew Ng Flags Urgent AI Upskilling Needs in India

TLDRs;

• Coursera shares slipped nearly 3% as investors digested Andrew Ng’s warning on urgent AI reskilling in India.
• Ng said rapid AI adoption could displace jobs unless large-scale workforce upskilling accelerates across key sectors.
• Data on the true size of India’s AI skills gap remains limited, complicating demand and progress assessment.
• Enterprises prioritizing internal AI agents may boost long-term demand for specialized training and governance solutions.

Coursera shares edged lower by nearly 3% in recent trading as investors weighed comments from co-founder Andrew Ng warning that India must accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) upskilling to avoid widespread job disruption.

The pullback came despite growing global demand for AI education and enterprise training, highlighting the market’s sensitivity to how quickly large economies can adapt their workforces to fast-moving technological change.

Ng, one of the world’s most prominent AI researchers and the founder of DeepLearning.AI, said the skills required across industries are being reshaped at a pace that traditional education and corporate training systems are struggling to match.

His remarks focused on India, home to a massive $280 billion IT services industry and millions of technology workers who could face displacement if reskilling does not keep up with automation and AI-driven productivity gains.

AI Reshaping Indian Workforce

Ng stressed that AI tools are already transforming how work is done, making many roles more efficient while also altering the mix of skills companies need. From software development and data analysis to customer support and business process outsourcing, tasks that once required large teams are increasingly being augmented or partially automated by machine learning systems and AI agents.

Coursera, Inc., COUR

While this shift can boost productivity and create new categories of jobs, Ng warned that the transition could be painful if workers are not retrained quickly enough. Without large-scale, coordinated upskilling efforts, the risk is that job displacement outpaces job creation, particularly in economies like India where technology services employ millions and serve global clients.

He also pushed back against claims that artificial general intelligence (AGI) is imminent, arguing that today’s models, while powerful, remain far from human-level reasoning. However, he emphasized that even “narrow” AI is already strong enough to reshape workflows and organizational structures, making reskilling an urgent priority rather than a long-term aspiration.

Gaps In Skills Data

One of the key issues highlighted by analysts is the lack of clear metrics around the current AI skills gap. India has made progress, with government figures showing more than 320,000 people enrolled or trained in AI and Big Data Analytics by August 2025. Yet this number is small relative to the country’s vast technology workforce, which runs into the millions.

There is also limited transparency on how many workers possess advanced, production-ready AI skills, making it difficult to measure how far the market is from meeting enterprise demand.

On the corporate side, surveys indicate that a large majority of firms now have dedicated AI budgets, but the exact roles being hired for, such as model engineers, data platform architects, AI operations specialists, and governance leads, are often not clearly broken down in public data.

For investors, this uncertainty matters because it affects how quickly spending on online learning platforms, corporate training programs, and specialized certification courses can scale. Coursera, which partners with universities and companies to deliver professional courses, stands to benefit from a sustained push toward reskilling, but the pace of adoption remains a key variable.

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