Eightfold.ai Launches First Deep Learning Talent Intelligence Platform To Close the Talent Gap

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Eightfold.ai, the first Talent Intelligence Platform to address the talent gap by harnessing the power of AI and search, today announced the unveiling of its platform and $18M in Series B funding led by Foundation Capital and Lightspeed. Inspired by the "eightfold path" philosophy that empowers people to find the career path of their choosing, Eightfold.ai is the brainchild of two of the most decorated minds in AI, Ashutosh Garg and Varun Kacholia, who have over 6000+ research citations and 80+ search and personalization patents.

Formerly known as Volkscience, Eightfold.ai's Talent Intelligence Platform (TIP) has been built for enterprises to address talent acquisition and management in a holistic manner. Eightfold.ai's TIP focuses in on three key areas: talent, personalization and artificial intelligence.

• Talent. Eightfold.ai creates a comprehensive talent network unique to an organization by aggregating all internal and external data for an enterprise – from applicants to alumni – which is currently siloed across many different solutions.
• Personalization. By providing intelligence on people's capabilities and future potential, organizations can personalize recruiting. This empowers hiring teams and managers to be more effective in matching talent to the right opportunities at the right time, ultimately improving candidate relevance and engaging at-risk employees to avoid attrition.
• Artificial Intelligence. Powered by purpose-built deep learning models, Eightfold.ai platform continuously learns from all the data, engagement and decisions in the enterprises to predict future roles, career alternatives and support diversity and inclusion.

"Employment is a critical societal issue today and despite wide acknowledgment of the magnitude of the problem across employers of all sizes, past solutions have woefully fallen short of promise," said Ashutosh Garg, CEO and co-founder of Eightfold.ai. "With over one hundred customers already, our Talent Intelligence Platform is enabling our customers to take a holistic approach to talent acquisition and management by aligning business objectives with individual capabilities and ambitions. Every individual with the right capability and potential placed in the right role is meaningful progress for us."

"Historically, companies have not been able to recognize people's core capabilities and have unnecessarily exacerbated the talent crisis," said Varun Kacholia, CTO and co-founder of Eightfold.ai. "Our Talent Intelligence Platform is purpose-built to help companies find and match the right person to the right role at the right time and, for the first time, personalize these recommendations at scale."

Backed by Leading Silicon Valley Investors

In addition, Eightfold.ai announced today that it has closed $18 million in Series B financing. Foundation Capital led the round and is joined by Lightspeed Ventures, who led Series A. This round brings Eightfold.ai's total funding to $24 million.

"Eightfold.ai has an incredible opportunity to help people reach their full potential in their careers while empowering the workforces of the future," said Peter Nieh, partner at Lightspeed Ventures. "Ashutosh and Varun are bringing to talent management the transformative artificial intelligence and data science capability that they brought to Google, YouTube and Facebook.  We backed Ashutosh previously when he co-founded BloomReach and look forward to partnering with him again."

"By applying AI to the incredibly human-intensive work of hiring and retention, Eightfold.ai is poised to disrupt an outdated but massive market," said Ashu Garg, general partner, Foundation Capital. "Eightfold's intelligence platform reimagines how employees and employers discover each other, helps people find better opportunities, and saves everyone time and expense."

Applying Eightfold.ai's Technology Today

The company has been operating in stealth mode for over a year and has attracted more than one hundred customers from Fortune 500s to fast-growing technology companies like Heidrick & Struggles, AdRoll Group and DigitalOcean. The platform has processed over 20 million applications to-date, helped its customers increase response rates by 700 percent compared to the industry average and reduced screening costs and time by 90 percent.

"Working alongside board members and senior executives at Heidrick & Struggles to identify qualified leaders, it's obvious that recruiting and retaining the right talent has never been more important than in today's competitive technology market," said Kelly Kay, global managing partner at Heidrick & Struggles. "At scale, using a machine learning platform as an ally that systematically and proactively helps both candidates and the enterprise will be crucial for addressing the talent gap."

"AdRoll Group is proud to have an ongoing CEO-led initiative to bring more diverse talent to our organization. The Eightfold.ai platform has had an immediate impact for our business by surfacing a highly-qualified and diverse pool of candidates to AdRoll Group," said Daniel Doody, global head of talent at AdRoll Group. "We are excited about our early results and look forward to continuing our partnership on this important initiative for our business."

"As DigitalOcean continues to experience rapid growth, it's critical we move fast to secure top talent, while taking time to nurture the phenomenal candidates already in our community," said Olivia Melman, manager, recruiting operations at DigitalOcean. "Eightfold.ai's platform helps us improve operational efficiencies so we can quickly engage with high quality candidates and match past applicants to new openings."

About the Founders

Ashutosh Garg, Chief Executive Officer
With 6000+ research citations, 50+ patents, 35+ peer-reviewed research publications, and the outstanding Ph.D. thesis award from UIUC for his Ph.D. thesis in Machine Learning, it's fair to say that Ashutosh Garg is one of the world's experts in machine learning. After his time managing Search and Personalization efforts at both Google and IBM Research, Ashutosh founded Bloomreach, a leading vendor for Digital Experience Platforms. Now, he is applying his experience to the problem he is most truly passionate about —helping the world's talent find their most meaningful and fulfilling work.

Varun Kacholia, Chief Technology Officer
Varun Kacholia is one of the world's leaders when it comes to search, ranking, and machine learning. After ranking #2 at the Indian Institute of Technology in 2000 and earning his Masters from the University of California, Berkeley, Varun went on to lead the Ranking team at Google and YouTube Search and the News Feed team at Facebook. Varun is the recipient of several Google Executive Awards, has accomplished 20+ patents, and is an ACM ICPC world finalist.

About Eightfold.ai
Eightfold.ai Talent Intelligence Platform is bridging the talent gap by leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to give candidates and employers forward-looking insights that reveal not just what someone has done, but also provide insights into their full potential. With this data companies can find, engage, and motivate their best people to help them achieve business and personal success.

SOURCE Eightfold.ai