Curated Intel from the Talent Tech Industry
March 17-23, 2024:
• Introducing a responsible tool: Cielo debuts CLO.ai for TA that protects candidates’ experience;
• Feasting on talent: Inflection raises $1.3B and gets eaten alive by Microsoft its largest investor;
• Cleaning up “AI washing”: SEC launches campaign against false AI claims that mislead investors;
• Upskilling job seekers: Thiel grants awarded to Mercor founders for AI interview prep solution;
• Making HR agents the norm: Borderless AI emerges from stealth with $27M in seed funding.
PLUS
Seats are going fast at TAtech North America & The World Job Board Forum. Avoid FOMO, register right now for the only conference in the North American market that is specifically designed both for job board and talent technology company CEOs, their direct reports and rising stars and to accelerate the bottom-line growth of their enterprises. Why the rush? Because the conference will be held June 4-6, 2024 at The International Spy Museum which has a limited seating capacity. So, register today and accelerate the success your company achieves, today, tomorrow and into the future!
Cielo debuts first generative AI for talent acquisition: CLO.ai
Cielo, the world’s leading Talent Acquisition Partner, today debuts the first generative AI (GenAI) for talent acquisition: CLO.ai. Based on a new set of industry principles for responsible AI use, the intelligent tool allows talent leaders to maximize the power of GenAI for better hiring outcomes, fast while protecting candidates' experiences. [According to Arkadev Basak, Partner at Everest Group], “In a competitive, noisy market with many emerging, and sometimes unproven, methodologies and technologies, Cielo has established a responsible approach to artificial intelligence in human resources & talent acquisition. At Cielo, their data scientists, engineers, and talent acquisition experts collaborate to improve GenAI models, assess data for relevancy and accuracy, and operate in a secure environment, thus contributing to an enhanced experience for their clients and candidates. They are not only navigating the landscape but also handsomely contributing to its future development.” Many organizations are experimenting with GenAI, though only 4% of investment is going toward HR functions. That's changing with CLO.ai. Since launching its Digital Accelerators™ suite last year, Cielo has worked closely with clients and its own experts to build and test AI solutions trained for TA. Cielo knows first-hand the challenges organizations face when adopting GenAI, giving it an unmatched understanding of practical use cases and corporate requirements for risk management.
After raising $1.3B, Inflection got eaten alive by its biggest investor, Microsoft
In June 2023, Inflection announced it had raised $1.3 billion to build what it called “more personal AI. The lead investor was Microsoft. Today, less than a year later, Microsoft announced that it was essentially eating Inflection alive (though I think they phrased it differently). Co-founders Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan will go to Microsoft, where the former will head up the newly formed Microsoft AI division, along with “several members” of their team as Microsoft put it — or “most of the staff,” as Bloomberg reports it. Reid Hoffman will stay behind with new CEO Sean White to try to salvage what’s left of the company, which, I feel I have to repeat, raised $1.3 billion dollars 9 months ago and $225 million in mid-2022. Inflection’s thesis was a conversational AI that you could talk to normally via multiple platforms, and which remembered you and previous conversations, making it more personal and useful. A lovely idea, but Pi, their AI, never really got close. It was fine, but even with all that money they couldn’t keep up with the rapid advances in capabilities and services being offered by OpenAI (which Microsoft, hedging its bets, also backs), Google’s Gemini (which has the home field advantage in search), and Anthropic (which made its play for safe, boring applications at which AI can excel).
Eye On AI: Startups Should Heed ‘AI-Washing’ Warnings
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission settled charges this week against two investment advisers — Delphia and Global Predictions — for allegedly making false statements about their use of AI. The firms agreed to pay a total of $400 million in civil penalties, without admitting or denying the allegations. Those settlements came about four months after SEC Chair Gary Gensler warned businesses about what he called “AI washing,” or making false artificial intelligence-related claims related to their business. The term can refer to AI capabilities a company may not have or even if AI is actually incorporated into a product at all. Startups may have been dismissive of that warning, since the SEC tends to focus on the public market and may not concern itself with how a small VC-backed firm describes itself in the age of AI. However, it became a lot harder to be dismissive of possible enforcement against AI washing after Reuters reported this week that Ismail Ramsey, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California based in San Francisco, said he will be targeting tech startups that mislead investors about key information, including their use of AI, to try to defraud investors.
This AI Startup Wants To Create Jobs, Not Take Them Away
Have you ever been interviewed by a robot? At the Imagination in Action Summit in Davos in January, we saw testimony from Brendan Foody, who is one of the founders of a startup called Mercor that is using automated AI to match up companies with talented career professionals. The founding team consists of Harvard and Georgetown dropouts Brendan Foody (CEO), Adarsh Hiremath (CTO), and Surya Midha (COO). Foody, Hiremath, and Midha recently each received the prestigious Thiel Fellowship, a $100,000 grant awarded by billionaire Peter Thiel that encourages young people to drop out of college and work on a company. This marks one of the only times in the fellowship’s history where an entire founding team has received the award. With over 300,000 users from over 120 countries around the world, this company is growing – its founders got a $100,000 grant as part of the Thiel Fellowship, by creating a real-time interview experience where an AI grills you about your skills, credentials and more. In the last month, the team placed 500 people at US companies and supplied talent to the largest AI labs.
Borderless AI Launches from Stealth with $27M for HR Assistant
Toronto-based Borderless AI has emerged from stealth with $27 million in seed funding for Alberni, its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered HR assistant. Borderless AI claims to be the first company in the world to bring AI agents to HR, with Alberni automating the process of onboarding, managing, and paying international team members. The startup says Alberni is now able to answer employment law, finance, or tax queries in 170 languages, and is ready for global expansion. Borderless AI calls Cohere a “strategic partner,” claiming to be the only company deploy its LLM to HR. “We are firm believers that AI agents will become commonplace for companies just like websites in the 90s and mobile apps in the 2000s,” Borderless AI co-founder and CEO Willson Cross said in a statement. “Leveraging conversational AI, our platform automates many of the complexities within the global HR stack, without hallucinations, such as payroll set-up, time-off requests, or employment agreement generation.” The $27-million seed round was led by Susquehanna and Aglaé Ventures with participation from other unnamed institutional investors. Aglaé Ventures is the principal investment vehicle of Bernard Arnault, the French businessman behind luxury goods brand LVMH and currently the richest man in the world, according to Forbes. Aglaé Ventures counts Airbnb, Bytedance, Netflix, and many other big name companies as part of its portfolio.
Register Today While Seats Are Still Available at TAtech North America
Seats are going fast at TAtech North America & The World Job Board Forum. Avoid FOMO, register right now for the only conference in the North American market that is specifically designed both for job board and talent technology company CEOs, their direct reports and rising stars and to accelerate the bottom-line growth of their enterprises. Why the rush? Because the conference will be held June 4-6, 2024 at The International Spy Museum which has a limited seating capacity. Whether your company is a niche or general job board, aggregator, talent marketplace, online classifieds business, programmatic platform, chatbot, conversational AI solution, ATS, recruitment marketing solution, CRM platform, interviewing or assessment system or talent technology consultancy, this event will supercharge your sales and your profits. So, register today and accelerate the success your company achieves, today, tomorrow and into the future!