Maven sees surge in AI research courses for 2026

Maven’s course marketplace is showing a notable concentration of AI-focused research courses in early 2026. Multiple instructors, including Caitlin Sullivan (ex-Spotify), John Whalen (Johns Hopkins PhD), Ann Conway (Amplify), Abi Awomosu (ex-Meta/Uber/Apple), and Jared Spool, are running cohort-based courses specifically on AI applications in customer and UX research.

The pattern is significant because it indicates the AI research skills gap is large enough to sustain multiple competing courses simultaneously. These are not introductory AI courses; they are specialized programs focused on AI-moderated interviews, synthetic users, analysis workflows, and strategic research for AI products. The instructor profiles, all experienced practitioners who came to AI through research rather than the other way around, suggest the target audience is working researchers rather than AI enthusiasts.

For individual researchers, this means formal training options now exist for skills that, even a year ago, were only learnable through experimentation. For research leaders, the variety of approaches across these courses, from Sullivan’s analysis-focused method to Conway’s human-led philosophy to Whalen’s tool-forward approach, suggests there is not yet a consensus on the right way to integrate AI into research practice.