VirtualSpeech AI Roleplay and VR Soft Skills Training

VirtualSpeech Ltd is an independent UK company, registered in England and Wales, founded in 2016 by Sophie Thompson and Dom Barnard. Its first product used virtual reality to put people in front of a realistic audience to practise public speaking; it has since become an AI practice platform for workplace conversations and presentations used by L&D teams and universities in more than 130 countries.

Learners rehearse roleplays with AI characters that push back, present real slides to a virtual audience that asks questions, take guided sessions with an AI coach and complete short skill drills. Each session is scored against named criteria within seconds, and skills analytics report progress by individual, team or cohort. Training runs in the browser or on tablets, and in full VR or mixed reality on Meta Quest, Pico and Vive with body-language and eye-contact scoring and up to six learners per session. Clients include Deloitte, Deutsche Telekom, Bayer, Swisscom, Zurich Insurance and IE Business School.

• AI roleplays: conversations with AI characters who push back, stay quiet or open up only when the learner earns it.
• Presentation practice: learners present their own slides to a virtual audience that asks questions about what was said.
• AI skills coaching: guided sessions with an AI coach on a named technique, ending with a written plan.
• Scored feedback and analytics: sessions are scored on criteria such as open questions, empathy, pace and clarity, with team-level reporting.
• Custom Roleplays: no-code authoring of scenarios around an organisation's products, policies and personas.
• VR and mixed reality: Meta Quest, Pico and Vive support with body-language and eye-contact scoring and multiplayer sessions.

• Banks and insurers in Vietnam training sales and service staff to handle objections and complaints with AI roleplays.
• Universities and business schools running presentation and interview practice in shared VR labs.
• Corporations preparing newly promoted managers for feedback and performance conversations.

• Measurable improvement: users show a 25.9% average soft-skill improvement across more than 350,000 practice sessions.
• Readiness for real situations: 95% of learners say immersive practice helped them prepare for real-world situations, and 93% would recommend it.
• Uses existing headsets: corporate training centres can run leadership and sales practice on VR devices bought for safety training, with no new hardware.
• Fast rollout: browser access lets an organisation go live in a day, with pilots typically running one to two weeks.

Organisations that bought VR headsets for technical or safety training are looking for repeatable content that every department can use, while generative AI makes realistic conversation practice affordable at scale. Communication, leadership and customer-facing skills are increasingly measured rather than assumed. In Vietnam, banks, insurers, retailers and universities need scalable ways to train customer service, sales and English-language presentation skills.

VirtualSpeech Ltd, company number 09517558, registered office in London; founded in 2016; ICO registration ZB245994 and UK/EU GDPR privacy notice. Awards include Brandon Hall Group Gold, LPI Learning Provider of the Year (start-up), VR Awards Best Use of VR in Education and Training, and Training Industry 2026 lists.