Today Paradox announced a $40 million Series B venture capital round for its conversational AI platform, “Olivia.” Paradox launched Olivia in 2016 and was the first recruiting AI chatbot/assistant to get considerable market traction and customer adoption. Founded and led by HR technology industry veteran and CEO Aaron Matos, the company has been diligently growing a team steeped with industry experience while innovating products in collaboration with customers (reportedly now more than 200) that are using the tech in the field. All while building both product and organizational scale.
LIVE: Get more details and insights from Paradox CEO Aaron Matos at 1:30 pm Eastern in the Talent Product Plays Facebook Group with George LaRocque from HRWins and Madeline Laurano from Aptitude Research
This deal is announced at a time when recruiting tech investments have looked sluggish since the end of March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. Significant fundraising is always validation at some level for a company’s product, team, and strategy. Raising a Series B of this size during a global economic slowdown underscores the validation of the Paradox’s solutions even more so.
Paradox’s path to what is now a total of $53 million raised has never been one filled with hype, but with execution. When Paradox entered the market in 2016, I was given a view of the product. It was initially a fairly rudimentary chatbot with programmed Q & A logic focused on the initial aspects of candidate experience. No longer. Paradox’s AI assistant Olivia augments existing recruiting tech infrastructure, for example applicant tracking systems, by automating common recruiting, HR, and talent management tasks — like answering candidate and employee questions, screening leads and applicants, automatically scheduling interviews, collecting feedback, streamlining onboarding, and hosting virtual events — all through simple conversational experiences. Olivia speaks more than 100 languages and engages anywhere conversations happen — via the web, text message, major messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat, and through voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant.
The COVID crisis has most large enterprise employers looking at automation and taking transactional volume off of the desks of recruiters while candidate volumes are increasing and more of the recruiting and hiring process will be accomplished with no to low face-to-face contact. I expect Paradox to remain a force in recruiting automation based on the customer feedback I’ve received and the scale Aaron Matos and team have established.
Join the Facebook Live conversation with Aaron Matos at 1:30 pm Eastern here.