Sapia.ai, a Melbourne-based AI-powered recruitment platform, recently announced that it has raised $17 million in its Series A round led by Macquarie Capital and Woolworths Group’s W23 venture capital arm.
According to an official statement, the company intends to use the funds to continue overseas expansion, including making the product available in multiple languages.
Founded by Barb Hyman, Sapia is focused on helping companies unlock and engage talent at scale. With its blind, automated chat interview and comprehensive DEI analytics platform, its technology is the first solution of its kind to disrupt biases that affect traditional recruitment processes, delivering fair outcomes for candidates and companies.
Sapia’s AI powered automation platform is centered around a blind, untimed and asynchronous chat interview transforming the speed and quality of hire whilst removing bias from the hiring process.
Commenting on the fundraising, Founder & CEO of Sapia.ai, Barb Hyman, said:
Our customers are seeing extraordinary results – and seeing them fast. We give them data and insights that let them track fairness and bias in their decisions across the employment journey. I’m excited to have Macquarie and Woolworths investing in our technology – it’s an incredible validation for my team who have been committed to our mission from the get go and we can’t wait to open our technology to new markets.
The startup claims to have more than 2 million candidates in 47 countries who have interacted with the platform, which uses artificial intelligence to screen applicants and provide employers with a shortlist of potential candidates. More than 40 per cent of Sapia.ai’s 50 enterprise customers are retailers, and the company has signed up the likes of Qantas, Suncorp and Woolworths.
Co-founder of Macquarie Capital’s Venture Capital business, Dan Phillips, added:
His team was impressed and excited by the technology solution that Sapai.ai has created and how it is using AI to provide a better way for companies to approach and solve for diversity and inclusion. We’ve all been talking about the value of diversity for some time, but many companies are still not equipped to bring about real change. This is primarily because we fail to acknowledge our human biases.
Sapai.ai has doubled its customers in the last 12 months, helping companies hire more quickly and remove human bias in a talent-short market.
