Achieve Partners Closes $450 Million Workforce Fund II

Achieve Partners has closed Achieve Partners Workforce II LP (Fund II) with $450 million of capital. Limited partners in the new fund include Cambridge Associates, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Prudential, Ingka Investments and ZOMA Capital.

Achieve Partners uses buyout capital to acquire tech and healthcare services businesses in sectors with acute talent shortages, then builds apprenticeship programs inside those companies so they can create their own skilled workers and scale.

Achieve plans to invest the fund across sectors including behavioral health, biotechnology, cloud migration, data centers and energy, where it sees sustained demand for skilled labor. The firm’s model emphasizes apprenticeship programs, which combine paid work with training and, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, can generate a return on investment for employers.

The new fund is designed to address the impact of artificial intelligence on the labor market, with a focus on developing talent pipelines in areas experiencing workforce shortages. Achieve deploys capital into companies where apprenticeship programs can be integrated to train workers while they are employed, with the goal of scaling these programs alongside business growth.

“Private equity has spent the last decade asking how technology can replace workers. Our approach is rooted in a different question: how do you build the talent that makes technology actually work?” said Ryan Craig, a co-founder at Achieve. “AI will always fail without the people to deploy it, manage it, and build on top of it. Building that talent is good for the companies who commit to it and good for the country.”

“Achieve is proving that private capital—paired with an innovative approach to talent—can drive meaningful economic mobility for American workers while delivering strong returns for investors,” said Tyler Jayroe, a portfolio manager with J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s private equity group. “That combination is rare and increasingly valuable in an AI-enabled workplace.”

Fund II is more than double the size of Achieve Partners Workforce I LP, which the firm said has generated returns placing it in the top quartile of the Cambridge Associates U.S. buyouts benchmark across net DPI, TVPI and IRR metrics as of September 30, 2025, and in the top 5% for DPI. The prior fund has completed three exits, including an agreement to sell Optimum Healthcare IT, a services provider that helps hospitals implement and manage electronic health records, to Infosys for $465 million.

Achieve worked with Optimum to build apprenticeship-style talent pipelines into hard-to-fill roles, such as EHR analysts and healthcare IT specialists, effectively turning Optimum into a producer of its own skilled labor so it could staff more projects and grow revenue. Achieve then exited via a sale to Infosys, demonstrating that the apprenticeship engine translated into private equity-style value creation and a top-quartile outcome for the fund.

“Throughout history, every technological revolution has created more jobs. While AI will cause immense disruption, it will also reward companies that can effectively deploy talent to succeed in a technology-enabled environment,” said Daniel Pianko, a co-founder at Achieve. “This is about helping companies develop AI-enabled workforces at scale — and in the process, putting thousands of Americans on new pathways to economic mobility.”

“At Ingka Investments, we support innovative projects that create a better everyday life for many people,” said Samuel Rundle, head of financial markets investments at Ingka Investments. “Achieve Partners’ focus on apprenticeships offers a smart way to develop talent, providing valuable career paths and building strong businesses, especially as AI reshapes our world. It’s a testament to how practical learning can lead to both great opportunities and impressive growth.”

New York City-headquartered Achieve Partners was founded in 2019 and is led by Daniel Pianko, Ryan Craig, Aanand Radia and Troy Williams.