While everyone keeps talking about AI, HR tech startups are quietly building toward a $24B market
-While venture capitalists, startup founders and major tech companies compete to see who can say “AI” the most in a week, people are busy building other, more useful stuff.
And one particular group has caught our eye: companies that build software for human resource management.
The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.
Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.
TechCrunch+ noted in March that there’s a burgeoning group of HR tech unicorns in the United States that are ripe to go public when that window opens. But our initial scope proved limited, because HR tech is hot in Europe right now as well and it’s worth paying attention to.
It makes sense that HR tech has managed to grow rapidly and still fly under the radar — it’s not going to be hyped as the economic model of the future and neither will it be criticized for having the capability to potentially end civilization.
Still, HR tech companies often find themselves moving hundreds of millions of dollars — if not billions — through their channels and have therefore become large and lucrative.
Today we’re digesting notes from a recent GP Bullhound report on European HR tech to expand our general comprehension of the sector in anticipation of an environment in which IPOs are again a reality.
Morphing into unicorns, one paycheck at a time
Strikingly, GP Bullhound reports there is just as much bullish sentiment around HR tech as around AI and climate tech. “We look for these sectors to produce the next tech giants, with maintained if not increased bull-market funding levels and exponential growth in the number of companies,” the report said.