Juicebox raises $30M from Sequoia to revolutionize hiring with LLM-powered search

For years, recruiters used machine studying to search out potential hires by looking for key phrases in résumés and LinkedIn profiles. Though this technique helps to slender the candidate pool, recruiters nonetheless must manually evaluate every profile to find out the perfect match for the job.

David Paffenholz (pictured left) and Ishan Gupta, then simply 22 and 19, respectively, realized that LLMs might discover expertise quicker and extra effectively. They constructed Juicebox, an AI-powered search engine that makes use of pure language to investigate skilled profiles, private web sites, and different publicly accessible data to establish essentially the most certified candidates.

After attending startup accelerator Y Combinator in the summertime of 2022, Paffenholz and Gupta spent a pair extra years refining their product. When their AI search engine, PeopleGPT, was prepared in late 2023, it was shortly adopted by a variety of consumers, from small startups to massive firms like Cognition, Ramp, and Perplexity.

In a brief time frame, it was serving over 2,500 prospects and reaching greater than $10 million in annual recurring income (ARR).

On Thursday, Juicebox introduced that it had raised $36 million in whole funding, together with a $30 million Collection A spherical led by Sequoia.

Sequoia companion David Cahn realized in regards to the firm whereas catching up with an early-stage startup founder who stated that he’s utilizing Juicebox for all of his recruiting efforts. Cahn advised Trendster that the founder has employed over a dozen individuals with out utilizing knowledgeable recruiter, one thing that was beforehand very troublesome to do.

Such a rave evaluate of Juicebox piqued Cahn’s curiosity. Shortly after, Cahn realized that Sequoia’s inner recruiter was additionally attempting Juicebox to assist the agency with its personal hiring efforts, which made him much more excited in regards to the startup’s development potential.  

When Cahn finally met with Paffenholz and Gupta, he was much more impressed.

“I’m undecided I’ve ever in my profession seen an organization with 4 those who bought to 2,000 prospects with that small of a crew,” Cahn advised Trendster.

Though Juicebox has since employed eight extra workers, the corporate continues to draw prospects and not using a gross sales crew.

Clients are flocking to Juicebox partially as a result of hiring pace is extraordinarily necessary for firms racing to construct AI functionalities.

What units Juicebox’s search engine aside is its potential to deduce details about candidates very like a human would.

“We assist discover web new candidates that wouldn’t be discovered elsewhere, as a result of the profiles may not have the key phrases or the forms of issues that we’d anticipate them to have within the common searches,” Paffenholz advised Trendster.

The startup’s product is well-liked not solely with small firms that lack a devoted recruiter, but additionally with expertise groups at massive companies. By automating the candidate search, the software frees up inner recruiters to focus extra on constructing relationships with potential hires.

As soon as Juicebox identifies candidates, its agent can routinely electronic mail them and schedule preliminary calls.

Whereas Juicebox is rising shortly, older expertise acquisition startups like Eightfold are additionally including AI-powered search performance to their choices.

Nonetheless, Cahn is satisfied that Paffenholz and Gupta can rework Juicebox into an important product for each startup’s expertise stack.

“We’ve invested in quite a lot of companies that change into defaults for startups, like Stripe,” he stated. “I feel Juicebox has an opportunity to be a default the place, each single startup, [it’s] the very first thing they use to rent their first workers.”