Coursera's revenue jumps 94% on the Udemy merger, and it guides next quarter below the one just printed

Coursera▼−9.36% — Coursera, down 9.36 percent today, the NYSE-listed online-learning company, nearly doubled revenue in its first quarter carrying Udemy, and most of the doubling is the merger itself: $376.7 million, up 94% from a year ago, with the rival platform consolidated only from the May 11 close of last December's all-stock combination↗ ¹². The profit story is cost cuts delivered early ¹.

Shares fell 8% to $4.27 in after-hours trading↗ on the outlook ³. Coursera guided fourth-quarter revenue to $358-366 million↗, a $362 million midpoint below the $372 million analysts expected on average and below the quarter just printed ¹³. Underneath the headline growth, the demand numbers did not move.

The growth is consolidation; the profit is cuts

The segment arithmetic shows the booking. Enterprise revenue printed $200.9 million, up 214%, because Udemy's contracts arrived with the consolidation, while the enterprise customer count fell 4% over the year, to 11,897 ¹.

Management now expects to bank its full $115 million synergy target by year-end, eight months after closing instead of the planned 24, on more than $150 million of annualized gross cost cuts ¹. The 16.3% adjusted EBITDA margin is made of them ¹. Under GAAP, the standard accounting rules, the quarter still lost $25.6 million, and free cash flow fell 83% to $4.6 million ¹.

Retention reads better on the new ruler

Enterprise net retention, which tracks whether existing customers spend more or less each year, printed at 93%, up from 91% in June ¹⁴. Both readings sit below 100, so the enterprise base is still shrinking in net terms, and the year-ago comparison on the new unified ruler is also 93% ¹. Standalone Coursera had reported 89% on its own ruler, which is why a flat year can read like an improvement ¹.

The cash went to buybacks and Andrew Ng's new company

Coursera bought back $102 million of its own stock in the quarter under a $500 million authorization running since May, while the GAAP loss widened ¹. In July it put $100 million into LearnVector↗, an AI-native learning company founded by Andrew Ng, Coursera's co-founder and chairman, to build AI agents that tutor learners one-to-one ⁴. The in-house answer, Project Helix, an AI-native platform pairing trusted learning with verified proof of skills↗, reaches enterprise customers broadly only in the first half of 2027 ¹⁵.

Watch the customer count, because the synergy line is booked

Chief executive Greg Hart framed the bet in the release: organizations are investing at extraordinary scale in AI infrastructure, but the return on that investment depends on the people who know how to use it, and closing that skills gap is the opportunity Coursera and Udemy are positioned to address ¹. Cost savings land on management's timetable; customer counts and retention depend on buyers choosing to spend. Watch whether the enterprise customer count stabilizes and whether retention crosses 100, because the synergy line is already booked ¹.