Pioneering workforce fund partners with Alchemy to help businesses unlock new, AI-native pipelines of talent
Achieve Partners today announced an investment in Alchemy, a unique organization bridging earning and learning with their new platform built to make hosting interns scalable, measurable, and worth the investment for businesses across the country. The partnership marks an expansion of Achieve’s Workforce Fund strategy from apprenticeships, which underpin the firm’s recently announced $450 million Workforce II fund, into internships.
“Internships aren’t a new idea, and they’ve always been one of the most powerful tools for connecting young people to real career opportunities. But systemic operational burdens prohibit companies from keeping pace with demand,” said Matt Gurney, CEO of Alchemy. “Employers already see the value of internship programs, especially as a way to engage AI-native students and ignite early-career workers. The gap they face is operational: too often, the burdens of planning, recruiting, supervision, payroll, and compliance prevent employers from saying yes to internships before they even have a hiring decision to make. Together with Achieve, we’re removing those barriers to help more businesses build and scale high-quality internships.”
Alchemy launched its internship platform to close a persistent and growing gap in the U.S.: research suggests that while more than 8 million college students seek internships every year, there are just 3.6 million internship opportunities available in the country. Just 2.5 million of those offer sufficient quality – clarity of role, managerial oversight, and skill development – to translate to long-term career opportunities for interns. While many businesses, in turn, report that they see the value of internships as a talent strategy, nearly half cite operational challenges like recruitment and supervision as a primary barrier to expanding their internship programs.
Alchemy is solving this gap by operating as the first internship service provider: providing the infrastructure layer between employers, colleges, and aspiring career launchers. By helping companies navigate the operational complexity of internship programs, from recruitment, matching, supervision, and serving as the employer of record, Alchemy reduces the friction that prevents businesses from launching and scaling internships.
“At a time when AI is transforming entry-level jobs and dramatically increasing the importance of relevant work experience, nearly all young Americans will require an apprenticeship or, at a minimum, an in-field, paid internship to successfully launch careers,” said Ryan Craig, co-founder and managing director of Achieve Partners and author of Apprentice Nation, A New U, and College Disrupted. “As with apprenticeships, we know that companies and colleges won’t solve the shortage on their own; we need intermediaries to do the heavy lifting of setting up and running these programs for employers. Alchemy is the first company to crack the internship code for businesses, and we’re excited to help build the internship infrastructure America desperately needs.”
Achieve’s partnership with Alchemy was structured through a combination with Ease Learning, a portfolio company in Achieve’s Workforce I fund.
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