Jobandtalent, an AI-based “workforce as a service” marketplace that connects people with companies looking for hourly workers, announced it has raised €92 million ($103 million).
The Series F — which includes participation from Atomico, BlackRock, DN Capital, Hercules, Infravia, Kibo, and Kinnevik — values the Madrid, Spain-based company at €1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) post-money.
On the surface, a unicorn raising a decent round of funding from a well-known list of backers might sound like pretty strong news.
The reality is a little different. This is a down round for the company.
Jobandtalent, which has operations in 10 countries in Europe, the U.S., and Latin America, last raised money in December 2021, a Series E of $500 million that valued it at $2.35 billion.
We’ve asked for a comment from the company on why its valuation received a haircut of almost $1 billion.
“This round reflects a valuation adjustment in line with broader market dynamics, particularly within the tech and growth-stage sectors,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “The funding ensures that Job&Talent remains well-capitalized to execute the next phase of our growth journey. Despite challenging market conditions, we have consistently outperformed industry trends over the past year, driven by the strength of our platform and our ability to integrate AI across our entire suite of products.”
Some of the reasoning may also be a reflection of the European startup scene at the moment.
On the plus side: Jobandtalent was the beneficiary of strong tailwinds over the years. It came into its own in the years around COVID-19, when both businesses and workers were unsure of what was coming around the corner and gravitated to working arrangements that afforded more flexibility. Certain sectors, like e-commerce and the wider ecosystem of delivery and logistics around it, were positively booming and needed to fill lots of roles, fast.
It was an especially flush time for particular kinds of roles, and Jobandtalent found a willing audience of businesses and workers taking to its platform to connect to each other.
The company says over the years it has placed more than 300,000 workers in roles at more than 3,250 companies, with a particular emphasis on sectors like logistics and retail.
Yet the company’s funding news today is coming at an unsettling time: The European labor market since the COVID-19 pandemic has been buffeted by a number of opposing economic waves. Skills and people shortages have spelled opportunity for those who can fill the gaps; yet declining corporate profits and a stagnating Eurozone economy could spell tougher times ahead.
And that’s before you consider what kind of impact AI might have. It’s still unproven, but businesses and governments are staking a lot on AI being a cost-effective solution for some kinds of work, and that too could spell bad news for certain jobs.
Jobandtalent is sitting in a strange position in that regard. The company’s bread and butter remains the human workforce, but it’s also leaning into ways it can use AI to be more “work efficient.” The company says that the new injection of equity will be used to scale the business internationally and to invest in building a series of AI-powered agents into the platform to support that.
The first of these is called Clara, an agent focused on recruitment. In a test with a limited number of clients, Clara has conducted no less than 180,000 interviews, the company said, contributing to some 7,000 hires and “helping deliver industry-leading fill rates, even during peak periods of demand.” Jobandtalent says that the fill rates are “equivalent to the output of thousands of recruiters.”
Jobandtalent said it plans to launch further agents this year to cover other functions previously handled by humans.
“This capital injection reaffirms our shared vision for the future of Job&Talent,” Juan Urdiales, the startup’s co-founder and co-CEO, said in a statement. “Thanks to the platform we have built over the past years, we are now well-positioned to evolve into a fully integrated employment platform that helps companies manage their temporary and internal workforces more efficiently. Our next-generation AI agents will bring major improvements in productivity, provide better opportunities for workers, and unlock crucial cost savings for companies.”
