Paraform

Paraform operates a two-sided recruiting marketplace and, as the company describes it, an "Agentic Hiring Platform." Companies post open roles and are matched with specialized independent recruiters drawn from a network the company says exceeds 10,000 recruiters; custom AI agents work alongside those recruiters across sourcing, candidate matching, hiring-manager engagement and administrative follow-up. The company states its first product is an AI-native recruiting firm, with a longer-term goal of an all-in-one agentic hiring platform built on what it calls Hiring Intelligence and a proprietary talent graph organized around candidate strengths and passions.

On the recruiter side, Paraform supplies client demand (removing the need for individual business development), a free AI toolkit spanning sourcing, candidate matching, CRM, a notetaker and a scheduler, integrations to ATS, email and calendar, account-manager support, and handling of client communications, feedback and payments. Recruiters earn a success-fee split (the site's earnings calculator references an 80% split) plus additional rewards. On the company side, Paraform assigns a dedicated talent strategist and markets delivery of candidates "within days."

At launch the platform focused on software engineering and go-to-market roles at startups, and later expanded into research, science, manufacturing and defense roles as well as enterprise customers. Named customers cited by the company include Palantir, Rippling, Decagon, Abridge, Owner, Basis, Thomson Reuters, Arby's, Wilson Sonsini, Cursor and Windsurf. Paraform reports 1,000+ client companies, a 120-person team, and headquarters in San Francisco, with roles also based in New York.

Founding story

Co-founders John Kim and Jeffrey Li state the company originated when the two tried to recruit each other and encountered firsthand how broken the hiring process was, which became the basis for their mission to fix hiring.

Business model

Two-sided marketplace connecting employers with independent/external recruiters, augmented by AI agents. TechCrunch reported the company charges employers a listing (subscription) fee to publish jobs plus a success fee when a hire is made, with the listing fee intended to ensure employer commitment to the recruiters they work with. Recruiters receive a share of the success fee (the recruiter page references an 80% success-fee split and additional rewards) and access the platform's AI tooling free of charge.

Employer-paid listing/subscription fees for posting roles and success fees on completed hires, shared with the recruiter who makes the placement.

Traction

Company-reported figures include 10,000+ expert recruiters, 1,000+ client companies, a 70% interview rate, 3x faster hiring, a 98% satisfaction rate, and $65M raised to date. At the Series A in June 2025 the company said recruiters had earned $26M on the platform, with some on pace for $1M+ in 2025. Earlier, at the April 2024 seed round, it reported thousands of recruiters, 200+ companies supported, 10x revenue growth since the pre-seed, 100+ new customers, and more than $1M in revenue in its first year with a three-person team. Platform data cited in the Series B post: the top 12% of candidates receive more than a quarter of all offers, and the average candidate hired through Paraform earns about $260,000 per year.

Latest developments

In March 2026 Paraform announced its Series B, bringing total funding to $65M, led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from Felicis, A* Capital and Liquid 2 Ventures plus angel investors including the CTO of Palantir, co-founders of Canva and YouTube, the COO of Stripe, the President of Shopify and the CPO of Uber; the capital is earmarked for growing the customer and recruiter base, accelerating the product roadmap and scaling the team. The company is also marketing a product line it calls Paraform Intelligence and lists 15 open positions across engineering, operations, finance and data science.