IRVINE, CA – April 21, 2026 – EON Reality, together with EON AI Ventures, today announced the direct-to-consumer launch of the AI Founder Programme — 90-Day Sprint, an intensive, self-paced program designed to help individuals rapidly transition into the AI-driven economy. Previously available exclusively through university partnerships, this launch responds directly to the accelerating wave of global layoffs highlighted in recent reports, as organizations restructure around automation and AI efficiency.

The program delivers a comprehensive, outcome-driven pathway that combines a 100-course AI Fluency curriculum, the EAFI credential, Venture Builder frameworks, and the RADAR V3 agent pipeline—enabling participants to build, launch, and scale real AI-driven ventures within 90 days. Already validated through leading institutional partners across Europe and the Gulf region, the direct-to-consumer offering makes this proven ecosystem accessible to individuals worldwide through a single, streamlined model. By shifting the focus from job dependency to venture creation and economic agency, the AI Founder Programme empowers displaced workers to pivot, adapt, and thrive in a rapidly transforming labor market. The program’s structure, economic model, and real-world impact are detailed in the accompanying white paper, “AI Founder Programme: 90 Days to Launch – AI Founder Programme Empowers Laid-Off Workers to Pivot and Thrive.”

The Market Context: A Workforce With No Structured Pivot Option

The mass-layoff data is unprecedented in scope. Over 40,000 tech-sector employees were laid off in early 2026. Industry surveys indicate 55% of US companies plan workforce reductions this year, with 44% citing AI as the primary driver. An analysis of Labor Department data by economist Gad Levanon, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, confirmed that the unemployment rate for college-educated workers under 34 has now surpassed the rate for associate-degree holders — a historic inversion indicating that the bachelor’s-degree job-security premium has, at least for now, disappeared.

Michael Maximilien, the former IBM Distinguished Engineer quoted in the same Wall Street Journal article, summarised the hiring shift from the employer side: “I think I’ve met two people in 30 years that can do better than Claude Code right now. The models are getting better. So why would I not, in a year, just get more Claude licenses instead of hiring anybody?”

Against this backdrop, the existing reskilling infrastructure — job boards, resume workshops, 4-year degrees, coding bootcamps — is structurally mismatched to the moment. Bootcamps typically cost $12,000 to $18,000 and prepare workers for entry-level roles that AI is automating first. Generic MOOCs ($399 to $800) sell courses but do not deliver a shipped product, a verified credential, or a customer pipeline. Government workforce programmes have not yet adopted AI-native curricula at scale.

What the Programme Delivers

The AI Founder Programme — 90-Day Sprint delivers three integrated outcomes over 90 self-paced days:

• AI Fluency — 100 courses across five progressive levels (AI Foundations through AI Entrepreneurship), each assessed at checkpoint by the EON AI Fluency Index (EAFI), producing a tamper-resistant employer-verifiable credential with a public verification URL.
• Venture Builder — participants do not submit a thesis; they build and ship a live AI product on the EON Global Marketplace, which hosts 4,400+ institutional buyers across 80+ countries. Graduates leave with a working product URL, not a certificate of attendance.
• RADAR V3 — a 250-agent lead intelligence system that works continuously in the background, identifying prospective customers for each participant’s product across assigned markets. This is the same system EON uses to generate international student leads for its university partners.

Delivery is supported 24/7 by Brainy 2.0, EON’s AI mentor system with a photorealistic avatar, trained specifically on the AI Founder curriculum. The programme replaces the weekly human-coached cohorts of the institutional version with continuously available AI mentorship — enabling automated delivery at scale.

Participants may optionally add a formal university certificate from UBT or an internationally accredited partner institution, the same credential EON’s university partners issue to their enrolled students.

Click on the image below to access the AI Founder Programme – 90-Day Sprint presentation.

The Four-Condition Money-Back Guarantee

The programme carries a conditional money-back guarantee enforced automatically by the platform. Participants who meet all four of the following conditions and do not receive paying customers by Day 90 receive a full $975 refund:

• Completed all 100 AI Fluency courses, verified automatically by the EAFI assessment engine.
• Attended at least 12 documented Brainy 2.0 AI mentor sessions over the 90-day period.
• Submitted a complete Venture Builder product specification by Day 45.
• Submitted a live product URL on the EON Marketplace by Day 90 and received zero paying customers.

“The guarantee is a contract the platform enforces, not a judgement call we make,” said Dan Lejerskar, Founder and Chairman of EON Reality. “Every condition is tracked automatically. We can only deliver an outcome to someone who shows up and does the work — and when someone does the work and the programme doesn’t produce a shippable product for them, we refund every dollar.”

Why EON Is Moving Direct Now

“The Wall Street Journal wrote the diagnosis. It did not write the answer,” said Lejerskar. “Forty thousand people in one quarter were told they are redundant. Every piece of reskilling infrastructure in the market is either too slow, too expensive, or trains people for roles AI is eliminating first. We built the AI Founder Programme three years ago for universities. The platform exists, the curriculum is validated, the credential is employer-verifiable, the marketplace is live. There is no defensible reason to keep it gated behind an institutional partnership when the people who most need it — the laid-off marketing director in Ohio, the analyst made redundant in Frankfurt, the operations lead let go in Singapore — do not have a partner university in reach.”

“The direct channel does not cannibalise the institutional business,” Lejerskar added. “A laid-off knowledge worker was never going to enroll at UBT in Vienna, and UBT was never going to reach her. She is a new learner volume that does not exist in the institutional funnel. Our university partners retain their 80/20 platform fee on their own enrolled students and 50/50 on RADAR-sourced international students. The direct-to-consumer channel opens a fourth audience — career-transition professionals — at the same $975 anchor price, adapted for self-paced delivery.”

Availability

The AI Founder Programme — 90-Day Sprint is available for direct enrolment at ohwow.ai/founder effective April 2026. The programme is self-paced with continuous enrolment; there is no cohort cycle or waiting period.

University partnerships continue to operate under the existing dual-attribution commercial model. Institutional inquiries should be directed to [email protected].

Read more in the AI Founder Programme: 90 Days to Launch – AI Founder Programme Empowers Laid-Off Workers to Pivot and Thrive white paper.

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About EON Reality
EON Reality, based in Irvine, California, is the world’s leading company in immersive learning and knowledge transfer. Its flagship solutions — EON-XR, EON AI Assistant, and AI² Creator — enable millions of users to create and deploy experiential learning content. EON Reality’s mission is to make knowledge available, accessible, and affordable globally. For more information, visit www.eonreality.com