Recruiting startup Paradox valued at $1.5B following $200M funding round

Startup Paradox Inc., which provides an artificial intelligence assistant that promises to streamline companies’ hiring efforts, has secured $200 million in fresh funding to support growth initiatives. 

Announced on Monday, the Series C funding round was led by three prominent tech investors: Stripes, Sapphire Ventures and Thoma Bravo. The firms were joined by more than a half-dozen other backers, including Twilio Ventures and Workday Ventures. Paradox is now valued at $1.5 billion.

Scottsdale, Arizona-based Paradox provides an AI assistant called Olivia that can automate several of the tasks involved in a company’s hiring workflow. The startup is promising a twofold benefit for organizations. According to Paradox, its software frees up time for recruiters by automating manual work and at the same time improves the candidate experience.

Candidates applying for a role at a company that uses Olivia can interact with the assistant through an app. Olivia manages the job application process by automatically collecting information such as how many years of experience a candidate possesses. According to Paradox, the assistant’s ability to collect information automatically reduces the time it takes to submit a job application to as little as three minutes.

During the hiring process, candidates can ask Olivia questions about the company. Paradox says the assistant’s AI algorithms can generate answers within three seconds, which also frees up time for recruiters by automatically answering common inquiries.

Olivia can also manage a variety of related tasks. The assistant includes a set of specialized features that companies can use to host virtual job fairs. To support the requirements of large enterprises that have a presence in multiple regions, Paradox provides support for dozens of different languages.

Paradox says its software is used by more than 500 companies, including major brands such as General Motors Co., Unilever PLC and Nestlé SA. The startup also disclosed that its revenue has grown by a factor of nearly 20 over the past three years, but it didn’t share absolute numbers.

Paradox will use the capital to hire more employees across its sales, marketing and product departments, as well as other teams. The startup currently has about 400 employees. “This fundraise was entirely about team building,” stated Paradox founder and Chief Executive Officer Aaron Matos. “We’ll continue to build the most innovative software in the industry, all while we grow and develop Team Paradox.” 

Recruiting is one of several business processes that enterprises are streamlining with the help of chatbots. Processing support requests that employees send to the information technology team is another use case. Moveworks Inc., the developer of an AI platform that can automatically answer technical support tickets and other employee inquiries, raised $200 million at a $2.1 billion valuation earlier this year.

There are multiple startups with tools that enable companies to build custom artificial intelligence assists for more specialized use cases. One such startup, Kore.ai Inc., recently closed a $73.5 million funding round. The large number of players in the AI assistant segment indicates that there is potential for market consolidation down the line, particularly if more established enterprise software makers move to join the fray through acquisitions.

Image: Paradox