Case study
Industry
FinTech
Company HQ
Global and remote-first, with distributed operations worldwide
Number of Employees
5,000+
Office Locations
Global
Binance Provides On-demand Learning to Thousands of Employees in Nearly 100 Countries
Udemy driving business outcomes
Case study details
The financial landscape has changed immeasurably in recent years, with technology playing a growing part in how people move and manage money.
Binance runs the world’s biggest global crypto exchange. It’s a company that believes everyone should have the freedom to earn, hold, spend, share, and give their money. With a mission to increase the freedom of money, Binance plays a critical role in driving financial inclusion, building Web3 infrastructure, and empowering users to participate in a more open and equitable financial system.
The company is also among the world’s biggest remote-first employers. In just a few years, Binance has grown from less than 1,000 to more than 5,000 employees, with teammates representing roughly 100 nationalities across nearly 100 countries.
How does the company keep all those people up to date with the required skills and latest industry developments?
Since 2021, Binance has used Udemy Business to support its people with tailored learning experiences in multiple languages.
Providing learning to thousands of employees worldwide
When Binance was founded in 2017, it started as a remote-first company and experienced fast growth with an expanding number of employees around the world. This meant traditional classroom-style learning wasn’t possible. As the business expanded, learning also needed to scale across business units and regions while supporting different types of development, from role-based upskilling to leadership and continuous learning.
“When you scale virtual sessions, effectiveness diminishes quickly,” says Channon Tian, Organization & Talent Development Lead at Binance. “People will always learn on their own, whether that’s on YouTube or elsewhere. But it’s hard to know if they’re learning the right things. We wanted to give our people a platform with high-quality content that’s easy to find.”
Binance needed a learning resource that could support employees across regions, which meant multiple languages were essential. It also had to be accessible anytime, anywhere, so people could fit learning around challenging work schedules. Udemy ticked these boxes and several others that made it stand out from competitors. A combination of value for money, robust security features, convenience, user friendliness, and a vast range of technical content all contributed to Binance investing in the platform.
Organizational & Talent Development Lead
From pilot to purchase – making learning available to all
After a short pilot, Udemy Business was made available to everyone within the organization based on a first-come, first-served basis. The company currently has more than 2,000 licences across all departments and business functions, with learning subjects ranging from data management and technical capabilities to soft skills and business topics. Employees also regularly use Udemy’s badging and certification courses to prepare for qualifications.
As well as organic, self-driven learning, Binance uses Udemy for centrally driven initiatives. The company creates learning challenges around important subjects, with prizes for winners.
And Udemy proves useful in providing supplementary learning to support leadership training and development programs, so people can dive deeper into certain subjects.
“If we have 30 people in an instructor-led session, then it’s important to remember that those people still have unique needs, different learning styles, and various levels of proficiency,” says Tian. “With Udemy we can provide advanced content to help people progress in their own time.”
Investing in community-led education
In addition to giving its employees access to Udemy, Binance extended its licenses to a select group of community ambassadors known as the Binance Angels, offering them learning and development opportunities.
“Binance Angels are a driving force behind community growth, from education and scam prevention to supporting users at scale, so we wanted to invest in their development too,” says David Princay, Community Lead. “Udemy helps Angels keep building their capabilities so they can lead stronger conversations, share clearer guidance, and support our global community with even more confidence.”
“The Binance Angels are a group of volunteers that are incredibly active in our user community and really passionate about crypto,” says Tian. “These people play a role in helping other users learn things and bust myths. Many of them aspire to be more involved in the industry. So, we provide them with Udemy licenses so they can stay on top of the latest developments.”
To support this safely, Udemy helped Binance set up independent licenses for its Angels, ensuring the company’s data isn’t exposed externally. Binance currently supplies 200 licenses to this cohort, and has seen an 80% adoption rate so far.
“We want to give back and help the people that contribute to our community benefit from Udemy access,” says Tian. “Binance Angels are learning project management, finance, and broader business skills, alongside technical training in programming languages and blockchain development. They’re also strengthening their English communication skills and exploring AI tools to create higher-quality educational content, helping them support users and strengthen the community worldwide.”
AI at the heart of learning
As a top fintech company, it should come as no surprise that Binance was one of the first to experiment with Udemy’s emerging AI features — an exploration that began with the platform’s AI Assistant.
“We’re wired to keep raising the bar,” says Tian. “So we’re always exploring what’s next with Udemy and adopting what helps our people learn faster and perform at a higher level.”
The AI Assistant allows Binance to surface relevant learning content using natural language searches. It’s a process that saves a huge amount of time and helps people find the most valuable courses more quickly.
“Udemy has a huge library,” says Tian. “With generative AI, you can try several prompts with the Udemy AI Assistant, tell it what you want to learn, and it will display the most appropriate content.”
Binance also uses Udemy’s AI Learning Paths, which apply artificial intelligence to create bespoke learning experiences for different roles or requirements.
“Previously, we curated learning paths ourselves, but doing that for every individual takes a lot of time,” says Tian. “With the AI Learning Paths, we can simply describe the need and Udemy generates a tailored path instantly.”
With some fine tuning after they’ve been created, Tian estimates AI Learning Paths allow teams to create learning experiences in at least half the time it took previously.
Organizational & Talent Development Lead
Multi-language learning, in-depth analytics and insight into every lesson
With Udemy, Binance is able to make its learning and development budget go further, providing learning opportunities for thousands of people. And with Udemy’s in-depth learning insights, Binance can see who is learning what and use that information to dictate future strategy.
The Binance team has monthly catchups with Udemy to identify areas for improvement, benchmark progress against other users, and get an overview of the effectiveness of the solution and how it could improve.
One insight Tian already has is how Udemy has improved employee satisfaction at Binance, an important driver for retention in a competitive tech industry.
“In our recent employee engagement survey, 88% actively agreed that they have the right access to learning and development tools,” Tian says. “Udemy played a vital part in that. That figure was only 78% before we joined Udemy Business.”
Ultimately, the Udemy platform has democratized access to learning for Binance’s international employees, making it possible to cater to the needs of more people across more languages.
“With how quickly we were expanding as an organization, scalability was a real concern,” says Tian. “We now have over 2,000 people learning in the language of their choice. It would be a huge amount of work to cater to those people without Udemy. The platform’s scalability, flexibility, and effectiveness have all been huge benefits for us as a company, and our employees.”
Organizational & Talent Development Lead
Turning lessons learned into teachings for others
Looking forward, Binance has big plans for expanding its Udemy use, and some new learning topics in its sights. As a tech company, it expects agentic AI to be a huge area of focus. But Tian also realizes that there is another side to that coin.
“As AI is more prevalent, it becomes more and more valuable that our employees learn people skills,” Tian says. “That will give us an edge, so we will focus on things like leadership and management skills, too.”
Binance also recognizes opportunities within Udemy that go beyond just learning. The company is considering creating its own content for the platform. Having benefited so much from Udemy, it now sees an opportunity for others to learn from its own experience.
“We’ve learned a lot over the years that’s worth sharing,” says Tian. “For example, how we work remotely across so many regions. At Binance, Collaboration is a core value, not just internally but across the ecosystem. We also treat our organization like a product, so as we strengthen how we operate, we want to share what’s worked and what we’ve learned along the way.”
Organizational & Talent Development Lead, Binance
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