The Best Bet in Education? Teach What AI Won't Replace.

01 /The Concept

Stepful just closed a $55 million round, bringing its total to $111 million – a meaningful number that signals investors see something durable here.

The company helps people enter the healthcare workforce by getting the foundational credentials needed to land an entry-level clinical job.

The focus is on what the industry calls allied health roles – the layer of support staff that keeps clinical operations running. Stepful's most popular tracks: medical assistant, pharmacy technician, and dental assistant.

Founded in 2021, Stepful went through Y Combinator that same year. It has since graduated 30,000 students, and in 2025 Time named it the #1 edtech company in the US. This startup was [covered previously](/review/chtoby-zarabotat-mnogo-deneg-uchit-nuzhno-prostym-veshham) back in 2024 when it raised its prior round of $31.5 million.

02 /Why It Matters

Stepful picked a good market.

Looking just at its top three programs:

- These roles pay reasonably well – around $45,000 per year – and their wages are growing faster than the average US salary.

- Job openings are plentiful: roughly 50,000 annual openings for pharmacy techs, 50,000 for dental assistants, and 110,000 for medical assistants.

- Healthcare employers openly say these roles are hard to fill – because qualified candidates simply aren't available in sufficient numbers.

Despite being entry-level, the traditional path to certification in these fields is neither cheap nor fast. The standard route takes two years and costs around $20,000 – which is out of reach for most working adults who need a new income stream now, not in two years.

Stepful's answer is an AI-powered curriculum designed to be studied on evenings and weekends. The goal: cut training time by 4x and cost by 10x – while still delivering the knowledge, practical skills, and officially recognized certification that employers accept.

Alongside the direct-to-student model, Stepful has built what it calls "training as a service." Healthcare providers can license Stepful's curriculum under their own brand, run cohorts of students who complete their clinical placements within those same facilities, and effectively build their own pipeline of future employees.

This gives healthcare networks a way to grow their own talent rather than constantly recruiting from an undersupplied external market. Stepful currently has 35 federally licensed healthcare networks operating this way.

The competitive context here is revealing: Stepful's main competition isn't another education company – it's the contingent staffing market. Because permanent staff is scarce, healthcare facilities rely heavily on contract workers who fill shifts on an hourly basis.

But that model is expensive and administratively burdensome. Healthcare organizations collectively spend $97 billion a year on contract staffing.

That's the number Stepful's founder is pointing at when he says Stepful is "not just an education program – it's the infrastructure on which the future of healthcare will be built"

The rhetoric is bold, but the logic holds. Stepful gives healthcare organizations a tool to build their own permanent talent supply, reducing reliance on expensive contract labor.

03 /Opportunities

The real macro trend here isn't specifically about healthcare training – it's about training people in roles that AI won't meaningfully displace for a long time.

That's the thesis behind Emversity, an education startup that raised $30 million early this year, doubling its valuation in under twelve months from $60 million to $120 million. Most of Emversity's programs are in healthcare, though it also covers hotel staff, luxury retail, and airline crew training.

These occupations have ended up caught between two chairs:

- People looking for long-term career upside go into tech – including AI.

- People who need income now head for fast-entry jobs: rideshare, delivery, food service.

Healthcare assistant roles fall in the gap – because the traditional entry route costs $20,000 and takes two years.

But compress training to six months, cut the cost by 10x, and allow people to study around an existing job – and suddenly the "third path" becomes genuinely attractive. That's exactly what Stepful and Emversity are building toward.

The opportunity in creating education products for this middle path is real. The criteria for identifying good targets:

- Requires a meaningful level of skill and certification

- Pays better than delivery or food service

- Has abundant open positions

- Faces an active talent shortage

- Won't be replaced by AI anytime soon

Which professions checking those boxes could support a fast, affordable, outcomes-focused training program?