AI recruiting startup Mercor nabs $100M investment at $2B valuation – News

Mercor Inc., a startup using artificial intelligence to streamline companies’ recruiting efforts, today announced that it has raised $100 million in funding.

The Series B round was led by Felicis. General Catalyst, DST Global, Benchmark and Menlo Ventures chipped in as well. Mercor is now reportedly valued at $2 billion, eight times what it was worth following a September funding round.

Mercor operates an AI-powered recruiting platform with a user base of more than 300,000 professionals. Recruiters can enter a brief job description into a chatbot interface and have the platform automatically find candidates with matching skills. A recruiter at a software provider, for example, could specify that the company is seeking a Python developer with five years of TensorFlow experience.

For each candidate that its algorithms surface, Mercor displays a brief summary of career achievements. It also shows other key details such as the worker’s years of experience. A “Hire Instantly” button speeds up candidate onboarding by automating some of the manual work usually involved in the process. 

For job seekers, in turn, Mercor automates the task of sending applications to companies. The platform determines what application should be sent to which company with the help of an interview chatbot. The chatbot can customize its questions to different roles: AI developers, for example, might receive a mix of programming challenges and questions about theoretical machine learning concepts.

According to News, Mercor is used by the world’s top five AI labs including OpenAI. Moreover, the company is profitable. It expects to generate a $1 million profit on $7 million in revenue this month and its top line is growing 51% quarter-over-quarter. 

Mercor will use the proceeds from its latest funding round to bring more professionals to its platform. It also plans to upgrade the AI systems that power the platform’s core features. According to Bloomberg, the company will grow its headcount from 75 employees to 100 by year’s end to support the effort. 

Mercor is not the only venture-backed startup using AI to streamline the recruiting workflow.

Last July, Tezi Inc. raised $7 million for its automated hiring platform. The software is built around a chatbot called Max that can automatically analyze job applications to find the candidates with the most relevant skills. Recruiters can fine-tune the underlying AI models by upvoting or downvoting their suggestions.

Larger tech industry players are also applying AI to recruiting. On Wednesday, Google LLC launched a consumer-focused tool called Career Dreamer. It’s designed to help users find career paths that align with their skill sets and enhance their resumes. 

Photo: Mercor