AI recruiter startup AllyO lands $45 million Series B funding in largest AI recruiting round ever

AllyO, an end-to-end AI recruiter with automated and conversational engagement via texting, has secured $45 million Series B funding in largest AI recruiting round ever. The round was backed by new investors Sapphire Ventures and Scale Venture Partners join the existing investors Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), Randstad Innovation Fund, Bain Capital Ventures and Cervin Ventures, adding $45 million in the company’s Series B funding.

The new capital infusion, which will enable AllyO to continue expanding its award-winning recruiting solution, rapidly evolving global presence and industry-leading AI team, brings the company’s total funding up to $64 million in less than three years. In conjunction with the funding, AllyO also announced that Jai Das, president of Sapphire Ventures, will be joining its board.

Founded in 2015 by Ankit Somani and Sahil Sahni with a simple mission of making recruiting delightful and efficient for everyone, the Mountain View, California-based AllyO addresses the traditional inefficiencies of lost applicants and conversions due to poor candidate experience, the high cost of recruiting due to overburdening of administrative tasks on hiring teams and lack of visibility and control for HR leadership. It utilizes deeply conversational AI to fully automate an end-to-end recruiting workflow by intelligently engaging via texting over mobile and web. AllyO is used by Fortune 500 enterprises that have experienced a 2-6X increase in applicant capture and conversion rate, 91 percent application completion rate and over 50 percent reduction in cost and time to hire.

Growing 4.5X in the last year, this new funding will enable AllyO to continue expanding its award-winning recruiting solution, rapidly evolving global presence and industry-leading AI team. As a result of its exceptional customer engagement coupled with the new investment, the company expects that more than 15 percent of Americans will find their next job using AllyO in 2020.

Eager to disrupt traditional methods and empower enterprise organizations, co-founders and long-time friends Sahil Sahni and Ankit Somani built AllyO using conversational AI to help employers find more qualified candidates, automate processes and receive actionable insights. Following immediate interest, AllyO welcomed several customers from the Fortune 50, as well as Avis Budget Group, The Cheesecake Factory, Pitney Bowes, Brinker International and more, since emerging from stealth mode in early 2018.

Gerry Crispin, principal and co-founder of CareerXroads, commented, “In a relatively short time, we’ve seen the inclusion of artificial intelligence and machine learning enhancing recruiting results with many new offerings rapidly picking up speed. In today’s labor market, every organization is competing for top talent while seeking to deliver an exceptional candidate experience. As a result, AI/ML driven recruiting will increase hiring by improving accuracy, efficiency and fairness, with a few pioneering firms like AllyO well-positioned as leaders in the category.”

“At AllyO, we aim to make recruiting more delightful and efficient for everyone. The AllyO team works very hard prioritizing customer success, generating clear ROI for the world’s largest employers. We are humbled by our exponential growth but also acknowledge the excitement of being able to see the path to an IPO in around three years. Partnering with Jai (Sapphire) and Stacey (Scale) will aid this significantly,” said Sahni.

Somani added, “Customers have taught us that AllyO’s consumer-like, engaging experience along with workflow automation solves so many of their employee lifecycle problems efficiently. With this fresh round of funding, we are excited to double down on this vision.”

AllyO is backed by leading investors such as Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), Randstad Innovation Fund, Sapphire Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Cervin Ventures and Scale Venture Partners.