Popp AI has successfully secured €4.3 million in a seed funding round led by Emerge and SuperSeed Ventures. The funding will enable the company to expand its presence across enterprise recruitment teams, enhance its AI capabilities, and streamline hiring processes.
Founded by Sam Dhesi, James Cochrane-Dyet, and Ilyes Benmansour, Popp AI focuses on transforming recruitment by leveraging conversational AI to deliver open candidate interactions at scale. The platform automatically analyses candidate responses, ranks them based on fit, and provides actionable insights to hiring teams.
The startup was born out of the challenges its founders experienced during the pandemic, where hiring processes failed to meet the needs of both employers and job seekers.
CEO Sam Dhesi, who previously served as Head of Emerging Technology for the UK Government during the COVID-19 crisis, reflected on the inspiration behind the company. “We saw how rigid and impersonal recruitment processes were failing both companies and candidates. During a time when human connection mattered more than ever, conversations were missing from the equation,” said Dhesi. “We created Popp AI to fix that—by making it possible to engage candidates in meaningful dialogue, even at scale.”
“In the early days of the pandemic, we experienced how difficult it was to screen candidates at scale while maintaining a personal touch,” said James Cochrane-Dyet, COO of Popp AI and former Chief of Staff to the NHS COVID Crisis Team. “Popp AI was born out of a need to remove bottlenecks in hiring processes without removing the human element required to build real relationships. Our open-ended conversational AI allows companies to engage with talent in a way that feels human but operates at the speed and scale enterprise teams require.”
The seed funding will be channelled into further developing Popp AI’s technology, which allows recruiters to conduct scalable, AI-driven conversations.
“We are thrilled to back Popp AI in this journey to revolutionise recruitment,” said Jan Lynn-Matern from Emerge. “The future of hiring lies in intelligent, scalable solutions that make processes more human, not less—and Popp AI is leading that charge.”
“Following a brilliant year of technological development and refining the company’s Go-To-Market strategy, SuperSeed is excited to co-lead the Seed round having backed the company initially as the lead investor at Pre-Seed,” said Ferdinand Reynolds from SuperSeed Ventures.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/11/london-based-popp-ai-raises-e4-3-million-to-further-enterprise-recruitment-with-conversational-ai/
