Handshake
Unicorn Β· $3.5BSan Francisco, US Β· Founded 2014 Β· 11,819 employees on LinkedIn Β· 19 known investors
Handshake is a three-sided job marketplace connecting 25 million knowledge workers, 1,600+ educational institutions, and 1 million employers. The platform provides career discovery, hiring, and skill-building services to help talent find opportunity in the AI economy.
Also known as Handshake (company) Β· Handshake (joinhandshake.com) Β· Handshake AI Β· joinhandshake.com
Founders & leadership
Handshake was founded in 2014 by Garrett Lord, Ben Christensen, and Scott Ringwelski.
Investors Β· 19
Also in the syndicate Β· 4
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements$3.2M disclosed across 1 of 5 rounds Β· 2016β2026
- $3.2MSeed roundJun 2026
Triple Point Ventures (lead), Future Back Ventures by Bain & Company, Octopus Ventures
Source β
Source: company announcements and press reports β follow each round's link for the claim.
Valuation Β· disclosed
Disclosed eventsSource: SEC prospectus filings, and round valuations the company or its investors disclosed β follow each entry's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Handshake is an American employment website and career network launched in 2014, primarily serving college students and young alumni seeking internships and jobs. The platform brings together job seekers, educational institutions and employers in one place, offering profiles, personalized job recommendations, virtual and in-person career fairs, 1:1 video chats and direct messaging with recruiters, career content and networking features. Recruiters can post positions to all or a subset of partner schools, while students create free accounts and receive job recommendations.
The company positions itself as "the career network for the AI economy," describing a three-sided marketplace that spans career discovery, hiring and upskilling β from first internships and full-time roles to freelance and gig work. Its consumer-facing site promotes paid, flexible remote "AI specialist" work such as AI evaluation and domain-expert roles (advertised at hourly rates ranging from about $40 to $125 depending on the role and credential level), which it says requires no prior AI experience. A separate Handshake AI organization exists within the company, with its own chief strategy and innovation officer, chief commercial officer, chief business officer and head of AI research.
Handshake also publishes annual job-trend reports based on user surveys; in 2025 it reported declining student interest in federal jobs and a declining number of internships posted on its platform.
Founding story
Handshake was founded in 2014 by three Michigan Tech computer science students β Garrett Lord, Ben Christensen and Scott Ringwelski. The idea grew out of the opportunity gap they experienced attending a small engineering school compared with students at Ivy League and other better-resourced institutions. Lord, raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, funded his studies with an IT side business, joined Michigan Tech's ITOxygen student Enterprise team, won a high-performance computing fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and cold-emailed his way into a forward-deployed engineering internship at Palantir β an experience that exposed him to Silicon Valley recruiting norms and shaped the company's premise that talent should not be limited by who you know or where you go to school.
Business model
Handshake makes its platform available to company recruiters, universities and other educational institutions for a subscription fee, while students and job seekers can sign up for free accounts. Its earliest college partners paid a small annual fee.
Subscription fees paid by employers/recruiters and by universities and other education institutions; the platform is free for students and job seekers.
Traction
Company materials report 25 million knowledge workers, 1,600+ educational institutions and 1 million employers on the platform, up from 20 million students and young alumni, 1,400 institutions and 650,000+ employers reported in January 2022 and 18 million users, 1,200 institutions and 550,000 companies in May 2021. Handshake reported over 1.7 million employer-candidate relationships formed on the platform in 2021 (described elsewhere as nearly 2 million), and lists employers such as Google, GE, Nike, Bank of America, Target and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Latest developments
Handshake has repositioned as "the career network for the AI economy," launching paid AI specialist and AI-training work (roles such as AI evaluation specialist, energy professional, FP&A analyst, game developer/designer, PCB tool specialist and philosophy expert, at advertised rates up to $40β$125/hour) and standing up a Handshake AI unit with dedicated commercial, strategy, business and AI research leadership. The student site also promotes a Google Gemini offer giving job seekers a year of Google AI Plus at no cost for skill-building.
βΈFull profile β market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Handshake describes itself as the largest early career network and the only three-sided job marketplace of its kind; press coverage frames it as a challenger to LinkedIn for the early-career segment. A 2026 Michigan Tech article states Handshake is used by every Fortune 500 company, every Ivy League school and 92 percent of top-ranked US colleges and universities. A company survey cited in 2022 claimed 37% more students used Handshake to build relationships than LinkedIn and 106% more than Indeed. Named competitors include Indeed, 12Twenty and Symplicity.
Unlike networking-first professional sites, Handshake is designed for candidates without existing professional networks, emphasizing where a candidate is going rather than where they have been, and creating new employer relationships through career fairs, video chats and recruiter outreach. It also connects institutions and education providers into the same marketplace, adding a skill-building component alongside job discovery.
Technology
The platform combines dynamic candidate profiles, intelligent job matching, interactive skill-building and AI-powered tools, alongside virtual career fair, video chat and messaging infrastructure. The company describes building a matching engine and AI tooling for job discovery, and maintains a dedicated Handshake AI group with an in-house AI research function.
Go-to-market
The company acquires job seekers through partnerships with colleges and universities, which integrate Handshake into their career services; employers then post roles to all or selected partner schools and engage candidates through career fairs, video chats and direct messaging. Content marketing via annual job-trend reports and student testimonials supports the consumer side.
College students, recent graduates and young alumni, plus people restarting or switching careers; on the paying side, employers and recruiters (including Fortune 500 companies, public school districts, healthcare systems, nonprofits and sports teams) and educational institutions including four-year colleges, community colleges, boot camps and minority-serving institutions.
Geography
Headquartered in San Francisco, California (Financial District), with offices in New York (Flatiron District), the United Kingdom and Bangalore, India, plus teammates working globally. In 2022 the company also listed a Denver office and a London office and said it would use new capital to expand its footprint in the U.S. and internationally.
History
Launched in 2014 as a career services platform for students and young alumni, Handshake signed its first five college partners in the 2014β2015 school year. By February 2016 it had raised $14 million total and was integrated into 60 universities with 1.3 million profiles created. The founders were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 consumer tech list in 2017. A May 2021 Series E of $80 million valued the company at $1.5 billion, when the platform reported 18 million students and alumni across 1,200 institutions and 550,000 companies. In January 2022 a $200 million Series F valued the company at $3.5 billion, and Handshake doubled headcount to 500 people during 2021 (725 employees as of 2022). In April 2022 it made its first acquisition, European recruiting platform Talentspace. More recently the company repositioned around the AI economy, adding a Handshake AI organization and AI-specialist work opportunities.
Risks & controversies
In 2023, during a contract renewal with Michigan State University, Handshake became involved in a disputed exchange in which MSU's then-executive director of career services allegedly proposed a quid-pro-quo to CEO Garrett Lord involving a patent. Handshake reported the incident to MSU and asked that the official be recused from bidding; the university ended its investigation without public findings, and the official denied the allegations and accused Handshake of fabricating the account to protect its business interests. Handshake's own 2025 reporting also noted a declining number of internships posted on its platform, indicating exposure to entry-level hiring cycles.
Compiled by commissioned research from 13 cited public sources β announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed β not independently audited.
Founder mafia
The Handshake mafia β8 people who came through Handshake went on to found or lead other companies.
Competitors Β· 3
by search overlap
Companies competing with Handshake for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline Β· 17
launches, deals, and filingsHandshake acquired Cleanlab, a startup providing software for auditing and improving human-labeled data quality. The deal was primarily an acqui-hire, adding nine Cleanlab employees, including co-founders Curtis Northcutt, Jonas Mueller, and Anish Athalye, to Handshake's research organization. Terms were not disclosed.
Handshake launched a human data-labeling business roughly a year before January 2026 to serve foundational AI model companies, supplying human experts such as doctors, lawyers and scientists.
During a contract renewal process with Michigan State University, Handshake became involved in a dispute with MSU's then-executive director of career services, Jeff Beavers, who allegedly proposed a quid-pro-quo to CEO Garrett Lord regarding a patent. Handshake executives reported the incident to MSU administrators and requested Beavers be recused; the university ended its investigation without public findings and Beavers denied the allegations.
Handshake made its first-ever acquisition, buying European recruiting platform Talentspace, in a move aimed at Europe.
Handshake's first acquisition, of European recruiting platform Talentspace, aimed at expansion in Europe.
Series F of $200 million led by Coatue Management and Valiant Peregrine Fund, with participation from Base10's Advancement Initiative and other investors; valuation of $3.5 billion, described as more than double its 2021 valuation.
$200M source β
Base10 Partners' Advancement Initiative, a $250 million growth-stage fund donating half its carried interest to HBCU scholarships, created 'The Handshake Scholarship' and will pair internships with HBCU students and graduates.
Series F led by Coatue Management and Valiant Peregrine Fund, with participation from Base10's Advancement Initiative and other investors; valuation more than doubled versus 2021.
$200M source β
Michael L. Lomax, President and CEO of UNCF, joined Handshake's Board of Directors.
Valerie Capers Workman, previously VP of People and Associate General Counsel at Tesla, joined Handshake as Chief Legal Officer.
Base10 Partners' investment created 'The Handshake Scholarship' under Base10's Advancement Initiative, a $250 million growth-stage fund donating half its carried interest to scholarships for HBCU students; Base10 also collaborates with Handshake to pair internships with HBCU students and new graduates.
The President and CEO of UNCF joined Handshake's board of directors.
Wikipedia, citing TechCrunch, reports an $80 million Series E in May 2021 valuing the company at $1.5 billion; at the time the platform had 18 million students and alumni from 1,200 institutions and 550,000 companies.
$80M source β
TechCrunch reported the platform had 18 million students and alumni from 1,200 educational institutions and 550,000 companies at the time.
$80M source β
The three Handshake founders were featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for consumer tech.
The three co-founders were featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for consumer tech.
By February 2016 the company had raised $14 million and was integrated into 60 universities with 1.3 million profiles created.
$14M source β
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
Frequently asked questions
- What does Handshake do?
- Handshake operates a three-sided career network linking job seekers, educational institutions and employers.
- Who founded Handshake?
- Handshake was founded by Garrett Lord, Ben Christensen, Scott Ringwelski in 2014.
- Who are Handshake's investors?
- Handshake's investors include Coatue Management, GSV Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Notable Capital, Sozo Ventures, Spark Capital, True Ventures and 7 more.
- How much funding has Handshake raised?
- Handshake has disclosed $3.2M raised across 1 of its 5 known rounds.
- Where is Handshake headquartered?
- Handshake is headquartered in San Francisco, US.